In April 1986 Rosemary Vineyard was started by planting 16,000 predominantly French and German vines. Our varieties are detailed in the Vineyard trail information which follows. Our climate is similar to that of Luxembourg and the wine growing regions of Northern Germany with perhaps slightly less extremes and a little more humidity, there are also similarities between us and the French regions of Alsace and Champagne. We continuously experiment with the planting of Vines to find varieties better suited to our climate. 50% of our plantings are of grafted stock which means that they are grafted on to American root stocks to protect them from attack by Phylloxera, an aphid that came to Europe from America and destroyed most of their Vineyards in the latter part of the last century.