Owners of Augill Castle, near Kirkby Stephen, are hosting a wine tasting with a difference.

The evening will have a South American theme and, as well as the very best wines from Latin America, presented by wine merchants Playford Ros, of Thirsk, there will be a six-course meal prepared by the castle proprietors, Simon and Wendy Bennett, showcasing South American flavours. There will also be some live Latin jazz music to add to the ambience, writes Karen Morley.

Simon, who last year vitited Guyana as part of a sponsored fund-raising project to raise money for Warcop Primary School, where he is chairman of governors, will present a few anecdotes from his experience in South America.

Simon and Wendy planned the evening before the January flooding of Cumbria, and have decided to donate £5 from every ticket sold to the Cumbria Flood Relief Fund.

The couple raised £300 for the Cumbria PlusBus fund and £300 for the Neuro Fibromatosis Association with their Augill Christmas Concert at the end of last year.

Hosting charity events seemed a long way off when the couple first moved to Augill in September 1997. The castle was then a disused, grade II listed building that had unsympathetically been turned into four holiday flats. It would have been a mammoth project for a seasoned property developer, but for novices Wendy and Simon it was a leap of faith to create not only a home but also a family business.

Former journalist Simon, who has a background in international hotel management, and his wife Wendy, who worked in human resources, bought shares in a Mayfair restaurant in London. While Simon ran the restaurant, Wendy continued to work in recruitment but they became disillusioned with London life and, when they saw Augill Castle at Brough for sale in a national magazine, they came, saw and fell in love with the building.

The neo-gothic style castle, built in 1841, was a grand county house with an army of servants and gardeners. It was owned by Major Ingham before the second world war and was briefly occupied by French Canadian airmen during wartime but then fell into disrepair during the late 1940s and early 50s. In the 1970s an antique dealer owned the building and is thought to have been responsible for installing the Tudor panelling in the hall and other parts of the house. But in the 1980s developers attempted to divide the castle into flats. This was later abandoned, leaving the building empty for several years before Simon and Wendy discovered their dream home.

Simon said: "On a whim we came to Cumbria to have a look. Neither of us believed we were coming to look at our future, but we hadn't even reached the end of the drive before knowing that we could make our home here.

"And so, in September 1997, we made a leap of faith and moved into Augill to embark on a project to breath new life into the once grand old house.

"When we took over, the first floor of the house had been very badly converted into self-contained holiday flats while the main rooms downstairs were the same proportions as they are today, although very shabby.

"With the help of an architect, we re-drew the plans of the house. Downstairs, the main living rooms have been redecorated and restored to their former glory.

"The planners were very accommodating, and we have tried to be sympathetic to the building with everything we have done.

"We have used historically authentic colours throughout the house and have tried to furnish the rooms in sympathy with the period of the house, without turning it into a museum; Augill is, after all, a family home.

"We have also won the Environmental Award from the Carlisle and Eden Business Network for our energy efficiency and use of recycling. Responsible use of resources may be a trendy concept at the moment but we believe as owners of a high energy using business, and, perhaps even more importantly, as parents of two young children, we do have a responsibility to minimise the impact on our environment of what we do.

"For an old house, Augill runs surprisingly efficiently. To a large extend that is due to the way we run the castle. Our heating and hot water system is fuelled by liquid petroleum gas (LPG) which is cleaner and more efficient than oil. Where every possible we use low energy light fittings.

"During our renovations at the castle we have been conscious of minimising waste. We believe that rooms should be renovated using existing or reclaimed materials wherever possible rather than replacing old with new. It is for that reason that guests may find the occasional loose door knob, a crumbly piece of plaster or patched woodwork."

Wendy said: "The day we moved in I arrived at Augill at 5am. It was a damp, cold, September morning and I wondered at that moment what had we done. At one end of the house the dry rot had taken hold of the floorboards, which needed replacing, and plaster was falling off. We started at the other end of the house, and made one room habitable. All our furniture only just filled the one room at that time. We worked systematically, one room at a time, taking one piece of furniture or a piece of cloth as the inspiration for each room. The schemes for each room evolved, rather than being pre-planned on paper.

"We have been very fortunate to have been able to find very talented craftspeople to work on the house. Cumbria is full of extraordinarily talented people and there are lots of young people learning crafts in the county. We found most of the people who have worked on the house over the past seven years by word of mouth. In the beginning we cast our net quiet wide, with people coming from West Cumbria to work here. But we now have a number of local people who regularly work on the castle. Appleby is a thriving place for tradespeople, but everyone is very busy. Because of our budget constraints, we couldn't retain one builder to work straight through the project, but we have a number of excellent workmen within a ten-mile radius who we use regularly.

"The first floor, which housed the four holiday bedsits, had the structural changes completed in seven months, but it took another year before all six bedroom suites were available. We decorated the corridor first, opening up the rooms for guests one at a time, as they became available."

Simon added: "The work is far from over but we have achieved a lot more in seven years than we ever dreamed we would including Oliver, born in August 1998 and Emily who arrived in November 2000. In early 2001 we toyed with the idea of selling up and starting all over again further south. But putting the castle on the market made us realise what we have achieved here and how much more is still to do.

"Since then we have created two new bedrooms suites and renovated The Stables across the courtyard which can now sleep six. The downstairs lavatories have been refurbished and we have restored or replaced all the windows at the back of the castle. We have re-landscaped the grounds, planted 150 trees and removed hundreds of yards of redundant barbed wire fencing."

Wendy added: "My advice to anyone taking on a project like this is to take it a step at a time and ensure you have finished one stage completely before moving onto the next."

With this principle Wendy and Simon have achieved a great deal in seven years. Augill Castle is not a hotel, but a unique place, the quintessential country house experience, which is enjoyed by guests from around the world and is now licensed to perform weddings.