The Cornwall vineyard that beat Bollinger gets its own episode

A drone lifts off over a valley near Bodmin and the camera finds row after row of vines running down towards the River Camel. Somewhere among them, a winemaker is about to tell a watch company’s founder how a farm that once kept sheep ended up outselling Champagne houses on their own turf. It sounds like the start of an unlikely story, and it is one.

A Cornish vineyard among Britain’s oldest names

Camel Valley, the vineyard at Nanstallon near Bodmin, has been chosen to represent Cornwall in Crafted Through Time, a new documentary series from the British watch company Swan & Edgar. The series, filmed across England throughout July 2026, follows founder James Fields as he visits ten British makers, from the world’s oldest hat shop on St James’s Street to a Birmingham leather factory that has run since 1890. Camel Valley is the only Cornwall stop on the list, and the only working farm.

Each episode pairs a filmed conversation between James and the people behind the brand with footage of the craft itself, whether that is a barber’s hot towel shave, type being set by hand on a letterpress, or in Camel Valley’s case, grapes being pressed and bottles being turned in the cellar.

“Britain is full of people who chose to do things the long way, by hand, from scratch, taking the time that most of the world won’t. This is their story. Crafted Through Time,” said James Fields, founder of Swan & Edgar.

The vineyard that beat Bollinger

Camel Valley was planted in 1989 by Bob Lindo, a former RAF pilot, and his wife Annie, on slopes above the Camel that had previously grazed sheep and cattle. Their son Sam Lindo took over as winemaker and has since beaten Bollinger and Louis Roederer to win Best International Traditional Method Sparkling Wine, a result that put a small Cornish vineyard ahead of two of Champagne’s grandest houses on the world stage. The vineyard now holds Royal Warrants as purveyor of English sparkling wines to both the King and Queen.

It is that father-and-son story, and the particular Cornish stubbornness behind it, that the episode leans on. James shares a glass with the family in the vineyard itself, the same vines visible behind them as the ones lifting out of the valley in the opening drone shot.

Filming on the vines above the Camel

The Cornwall shoot took the crew through the winery, the tasting room at Camel Valley, and out into the vines themselves for the conversation between Sam and James. Josh Adams was director of photography across the series, with Maxime Lancesseur producing.

Crafted Through Time sits alongside Swan & Edgar‘s own approach to watchmaking, described by the company as sourcing globally but assembling and regulating in Britain. The Bodmin episode gives that idea a very literal setting: French grape varieties and traditional method winemaking, grown and bottled on a Cornish hillside by a family that has spent nearly four decades getting it right.

When to watch

The ten episodes are released fortnightly from September 2026 on the Swan & Edgar YouTube channel, each running twelve to fifteen minutes, with further instalments already in production. Short-form cuts will also appear on Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts alongside behind-the-scenes photos on the Swan & Edgar Journal.

Whichever episode airs first, the one filmed among the vines near Bodmin carries a line that Sam Lindo has presumably had to repeat more than once since that trophy went to Cornwall instead of Champagne.