News

We're delighted to announce a partnership with Birling Estate in Kent, to plant 40 acres of vineyard on a part of their 1,800 acre holding through a shared farming contract. The new plantings at Birling will double the size of our current site enabling us to meet growing demand for our wine. Four varieties are set to be planted at Birling over the next two years, echoing our original vineyard site with Burgundian clones of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier for their flagship Pelegrim sparkling blend, as well as Ortega. Adrian explains "The plot at Birling is incredibly similar...

This month, we’ve been working on a full analysis of the soil across our site. Soil is essential for people and for the planet: purifying water, capturing carbon, protecting us from flooding, putting food on our tables and - crucially - wine in our glasses! No two soils are the same but all contain varying proportions of minerals, organic matter, water and air. One of the key elements of a wine region is its soil and for us, combined with aspect and climate, it’s our soil - a low nutrient chalky profile - which gives us such lovely fruit. One...

This month, beekeepers Roland and Anne Thomas visited to install our first Westwell hive. Set at the top of the vineyard, just below the Pilgrim's Way, and right on the edge of our wildflower meadow. We have approximately 25,000 bees in the hive which sounds like a lot, but once the queen starts laying eggs in spring, we could have have up 70,000. Bees swarm if the hive becomes too cramped, so if that happens, we might be able to scoop them up and have another hive. We opened the hive and scout bees came out to investigate. The scouts...

We are beyond delighted to announce the relaunch of our non vintage traditional method sparkling wine, Pelegrim: newly rebranded and now wholly produced by the current team. Pelegrim started life as a traditional method wine created by the vineyard's previous owner, John Rowe. When the current team took over, we continued its evolution, choosing to pick later for ultra-ripe fruit, lowering the dosage and extending the lees ageing to three years to give further balance and elegance. Winemaker Adrian explains "Pelegrim is a real crowd pleaser: a good fruit-forward base wine with a large proportion of Pinots to give red...