2015 Seyval Blanc

Cuvée Jack Pike

Twenty years my senior, Jack helped me plant the vineyard in 1974 - 8,500 vines with spades, a tape-measure, and a long piece of string!  His energy has inspired my approach to physical work ever since.  Jack died in 2013 at the age of 87. 

6,694 bottles produced

2015 Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier

Cuvée David Pearson

David supplied my first wine boxes in 1976 and became a key member of the work-team here until he died in July 2019.  In his early years he managed a large farm in Zambia growing maize, cotton and tobacco. 

6,004 bottles produced

2016 Seyval Blanc

Cuvée Marraine Pooks

Marraine is French for godmother; I called mine Marraine Pooks, my choice but I can’t remember why! She was a successful cookery correspondent publishing many books and writing regular columns for the Evening Standard and The Tatler under the pen-name of Helen Burke.

2,088 bottles produced

2016 Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier

Cuvée Sir Andrew Davis

Andrew became my nearest neighbour when he was made Music Director of Glyndebourne Opera from 1988 to 2000. He jogged over to Breaky Bottom one cold March morning, we drank coffee by the Rayburn, exchanged stories of our shared love for music, and our friendship grew. And he liked the Breaky Bottom wines…

3,031 bottles produced

2017 Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier

Cuvée John Agard

John is a performing playwright and poet from Guyana who came to England with his wife Grace in 1977.   He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry in 2012.

3,557 bottles produced

2017 Seyval Blanc 

Cuvée Grace Nichols

Grace is a Guyanese poet who came to England with John Agard in 1977. In 2021 she was also awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry - a unique double!  They reside in Lewes, and we have enjoyed their friendship over the decades.

6,833 bottles produced

2018 Chardonnay

Cuvée Geoffrey Aldred

Our dear friend Geoffrey is a superb stonemason, carver and lettercutter; a designer and maker of memorials, garden and ecclesiastical sculpture and countless inscriptions in stone. The list of his achievements is huge. He is a very modest man, but has allowed me to select a favourite of mine – The Figaro Garden Sundial, Glyndebourne Opera House, Bath stone, 1995.

7,068 bottles produced

2018 Seyval Blanc

Cuvée Brian James

Brian James was my daughter-in-law’s dad; he was Cornish through and through. At nineteen he travelled to Australia as a £10 pom. After studying Electrical Engineering at the University of South Australia he worked in many countries as a ‘big project trouble-shooter’ in desalination, satellite navigation and hydro and nuclear power. His life was spent helping countries and individuals to have better lives.

6,664 bottles produced

2018 Blanc de Noirs - Pinot Noir and Meunier

Cuvée Noella

My elder brother Rémy and I were born during the war at our Irish granny’s house, Rangeworthy Court in Gloucestershire. Noella was our first nanny, a wonderful sweet natured and very French carer who I still remember well. She fell in love with George Glede the delightful farm worker (who still ploughed with horses!). They married, and after the war moved to France. Long after, George, who had a superb Gloucestershire accent, used to write to me saying he still couldn’t speak a word of French!

3,572 bottles produced

2019 Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier

Cuvée Manja Scott

Manja was born in Zagreb at the end of the Great War into a musical and artistic family. She trained as a dancer and travelled to Africa where she spent twenty years of her young adulthood, teaching, performing and choreographing as well as raising three children. She was a freelance textile designer selling world-wide, but in the 21st century embarked on a career of brilliant painting and printmaking. We have known her as a dear friend since our children attended the same local school in the early 80’s.

5,978 bottles produced

2019 Seyval Blanc

Cuvée Minnie Charlotte

Minnie Charlotte Hearn was my great-grandmother, born about 1860, the mother of my Irish grandmother Marjorie Hall, née Atkinson. She was the half-sister to Lafcadio Hearn, my great-great uncle Koizumi Yakumo, who lived in Japan from 1890 until his death in 1904 and was hugely respected for his affection for Japan and for his writings and interpretations of old myths and legends.

6,988 bottles produced