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Freedom of the Press We are a micro winery making very small batches of English still wines using grapes from the best vi

New vintage, new label.The 2024 Pinot Noir, called Sonnet, is in bottle and wearing a fine new set of threads courtesy o...
24/03/2026

New vintage, new label.
The 2024 Pinot Noir, called Sonnet, is in bottle and wearing a fine new set of threads courtesy of .

The wine is faithful to the vintage: elegant, supple, redolent of roses and delicate red fruit. Extremely pretty, enticing and easy to drink. Grapes from and

Last haul of Pinot noir processed, destemmed and set on their way to becoming wine. Excellent tasty grapes from and , ...
18/10/2025

Last haul of Pinot noir processed, destemmed and set on their way to becoming wine. Excellent tasty grapes from and , following that from a couple of weeks ago.

As ever I am hugely grateful to family and friends ( old and new) who volunteer to help out for a few bottles of wine and a bit of camaraderie, but it’s often cold, wet and sticky. I’m very ambivalent about calling on volunteers, asking favours of friends, I really believe folk should be paid for their labour, and though I do give bottles it’s not the same an actual wage. But my winery sails very close to the wind (too close) in terms of its business model, true of many small operations I’m sure, so their generosity is very welcome, and helps the ‘business’ survive. In many ways I am a volunteer there too, it is really a labour of love. However, my ambivalence about the politics of volunteer labour in commercial operations remains.

Thank you all!

Pressing the first batch of Pinot noir from Hollands Vineyard in the Crouch Valley.. This is the most gentle method- I e...
13/10/2025

Pressing the first batch of Pinot noir from Hollands Vineyard in the Crouch Valley..
This is the most gentle method- I elevate my wonderful hydropress on a lifting pump truck and drain the fermented juice through the press directly into barrel, no pump - gravity only. Once all the free run has drained through i then press gently. Having a bladder in the middle it applies a very even pressure across the grape mass.

In fact no pumps will be used in the entire production of the Pinot noir. It will be moved out of barrel by being pushed by gas pressure, and bottled using gravity and a partial vacuum in the bottle (technically there is a pump in play as it is used to drop the pressure in the bottle - but it doesn’t work on the wine itself.


🍷

Brilliant day today visiting the three wonderful growers that are kind enough to let me use their fruit: . All showi...
21/08/2025

Brilliant day today visiting the three wonderful growers that are kind enough to let me use their fruit: . All showing incredible grapes. I don’t want to tempt fate but …. 2025 is shaping up very well. Soon my responsibility will be not to f**k it up.

Racking the Pinot noir ‘24 off gross lees. It gets ‘pushed’ by gas pressure (not pumped) from barrel to a small tank le...
23/12/2024

Racking the Pinot noir ‘24 off gross lees. It gets ‘pushed’ by gas pressure (not pumped) from barrel to a small tank leaving the lees in the bottom of the barrel which is then emptied and rinsed before the wine is returned by gravity.
All very gentle, and this was the first time with my new toy, a ‘bulldog pup’ gas racking wand, all the way from California!

Steam cleaning before racking the 24 Pinot noir.
23/12/2024

Steam cleaning before racking the 24 Pinot noir.

I hosted a great tasting with Suzy and her team from the ever excellent last week, they currently list the Pinot Noir, ...
26/06/2024

I hosted a great tasting with Suzy and her team from the ever excellent last week, they currently list the Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Gris. One of their team, took a few photos - he is also a photographer- and clearly an excellent one.
The photo of a man with his nose in the glass- needing emergency services to extract it - is me.

Special Air is the secretI am frequently asked a sensible question: why do you make wine in the Cotswolds when you bang ...
14/06/2024

Special Air is the secret

I am frequently asked a sensible question: why do you make wine in the Cotswolds when you bang on about using fruit from the fabled Crouch Valley and elsewhere in in Essex. Why not just move there?

Cotswold Air is the answer. Air is a major component of winemaking, most of my wine is made in oak barrels which breathe, and even the stone and concrete eggs encourage an amount of aspiration: air exchange develops flavours and texture in the wine. So air is the second most important ingredient after the grapes - the wrong air is not going to develop such exquisite notes, and could even spoil the wine. So, what’s so special about my Cotswold air?

1) I’m at altitude, about 135m, so there’s just less of it. This simply means I can can control the effect more easily, it is more gentle, more subtle, a delicate touch. Air at near sea level (SL) is just a bit of a blunt instrument leading to clumsy wines

2). It’s lighter - as a consequence of the altitude the wine is slightly less dense when it goes in to bottle, hence it is a bit more elegant than SL wine.

3) We’re quite some way from motorways, conurbations, even towns of any size, and the population is low density So the air is clean - no whiff of diesel with my wines.

4) The limestone in the soil round here imparts a slightly minerally quality to the atmosphere and thus the wine. It’s what we call airroire.

5) It’s damp. It rains all the bloody time - so the humidity is high, meaning the barrels are happy. And you know what they say: happy barrel, happy wine.

6) The views. The views are gorgeous, and views are 96.3% air, so it stands to reason that this gorgeosity imparts itself into the wine.

So - that’s why.

NB. It is possible that most of the above is somewhat hot air.

Is it Pinot Noirs or Pinots Noir?Either way I’m boxing-up a lot of them for to distribute to some fine feasting establi...
07/05/2024

Is it Pinot Noirs or Pinots Noir?

Either way I’m boxing-up a lot of them for to distribute to some fine feasting establishments.

Pinot Noir 2022, now in bottle. A beautiful wine from fruit and a smidge of . Cherry and strawberry and spice, a bit ...
19/04/2024

Pinot Noir 2022, now in bottle. A beautiful wine from fruit and a smidge of . Cherry and strawberry and spice, a bit of smoke and leather. Lovely texture and great length. Focussed, very young and will age well.

Bottling the Pinot Noir.Over the past 2 days we have had two bottling run of the pinot noir, the first with a light filt...
01/03/2024

Bottling the Pinot Noir.
Over the past 2 days we have had two bottling run of the pinot noir, the first with a light filtration which will be sold via the winery and website, and the second with a full filtration, primarily for our restaurants and wine merchants, but also offer directly from the winery. There are many, many, many theories about the ideal level of filtration for pinot noir, many believing that a light filtration, if any at all is preferable to keep the delicacy. One the other hand there is very little if any proper experimental (double blind, peer reviewed) evidence of any difference, and at this point they taste very similar. Their argument for a full filtration is simple - I want all drinker to have an equal (as in similar) taste experience not marred by the incursion of any undesirable little bugs such as Brett or Acetobacter. Thus filtering is the other approach to respecting the purity of the wine. I bottled the two version to offer choice, and out of personal interest.

None of the Pinot Noir was fined - that is to say neither version had anything added to clarify them, a process can also remove body and colour, they were simply clarified by long settling in a tank after 13 months in old French oak.

To my mind it is a fabulous wine - revealing the splendour of 2022 for this red variety.

It will be released in about 6 weeks, but I made a very small amount of wholly unfiltered wine, taken directly from the tank tasting tap (not even a boiling machine). This unfiltered version is available now and is drinking well now. Contact me if you want a bottle or two.

By the way, in the photo is Cat, one of our regular and indispensable, fabulous volunteers, for some reason giving up a day-off from her proper job to stand in the cold and bottle some red wine. Though she did walk away with a few bottles. If you want to join the fun, contact me.

This can only mean one thing!The Pinot Noir 2022 had been moved from the barrels where it has spent the last 14 months t...
04/01/2024

This can only mean one thing!

The Pinot Noir 2022 had been moved from the barrels where it has spent the last 14 months to a steel tank in preparation for bottling. The photo shows a barrel having the lees and other ‘dregs’ rinsed out after being emptied. This my first red wine; and what a wine - 2022 was excellent for still, red, Pinot Noir. In ’21 I made a white PN, in ’23 a pink, but ’22 was red all the way. It has great texture, both lifted red suit and deeper darker notes, some spice and to***co, great colour. Can you tell I’m really pleased with it? And very excited to get it out there for sharing and drinking. It will be bottled in a few weeks and released sometime around early March.

Barrels used for the Pinot Noir were from

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