English Wine Week starts on May 25th and to celebrate we visit two Sussex vineyards
Rathfinny
Rathfinny Estate’s Blanc de Noirs featured as the Ritz Hotel’s ‘Sparkling of the month’ in May this year. Rathfinny is one of the Sussex Modern partners a partnership of spaces that bring together wine, art and culture in Sussex. Sarah and Mark Driver left their jobs in 2010 to set up Rathfinny Estate near Alfriston in the South Downs of Sussex, one of England’s exceptional natural landscapes, with the express intention of producing some of the world’s best sparkling wine. Rathfinny occupies a perfect south-facing slope, just three miles from the sea, and its climate, chalk soils and aspect make it an ideal place to make wine. Rathfinny Wine Estate hosts regular tasting sessions throughout summer, during which guests are shown how the grapes are turned into award-winning sparkling wine and how growing vines and producing wine progresses over the course of a year.
www.rathfinnyestate.com
Digby Fine English Tasting Room, Arundel
England’s first negociant ( a wine merchant who assembles the produce of smaller growers and sells them under their own name) Digby Fine English has opened its Fine English tasting Room in Arundel, West Sussex just steps away from the historic castle and a few minutes from where the wine is made. The elegant room is overseen by the brand’s namesake Sir Kenelm Digby, who is credited with inventing the modern wine bottle in 1630. Guests can enjoy the tasting counter or the more exclusive members’ room.
Digby blends grapes grown in Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and Dorset.
www.digby-fine-english.com
