“I’ve come to appreciate that the best wine is made in the vineyard.   The winemaker’s job is to let good grapes express themselves naturally”

PETER HALL | WINEMAKER

It is my good fortune to have had a French/Italian mother and a French grandfather; Alex Mercier was a great restaurateur in Soho, Le Petit Savoyard, even before the First World War. It was perhaps inevitable that I should develop a deep interest in good wines, and food, since childhood.

Breaky Bottom sits in a beautiful secluded fold in the Sussex Downs – wonderfully remote; I planted the vineyard in 1974, seeing the potential offered by a climate similar to that of Champagne and the Loire.  At the same time modern plant science was developing early-ripening varieties, and demand was emerging for clean, elegant cool-climate wines.