‘Our vines span 230 acres,’ beams Sarah Perrin, a tour and tasting guide at Rathfinny wine estate in East Sussex. It’s a grey autumn afternoon and a gusty sea wind hailing from the nearby Seven Sisters smacks us across the face. A hawk cries overhead. ‘The Romans always said the ideal spot for a vineyard was three miles from the sea,’ Perrin explains. ‘It diminishes the risk of frost, which can be fatal for vines not only in winter, but in spring.’ What about the hawk? ‘He scares away smaller birds,’ she laughs, ‘more cheaply and efficiently than would our plastic coverings.’ Inside a warehouse is a wine factory with towering basket presses in fashionable stainless steel.
As the wine harvest draws to a close, England’s vintners have cause to celebrate. ‘2026 has been a landmark vintage for Rathfinny,’ says the estate's co-founder, Mark Driver. ‘We’ve brought in top-quality fruit from across the estate that will be vinified and aged in our cellars, then sold in 2030/2031.’ The company is hoping to make roughly 30,000 cases of Sussex Sparkling this year, released through restaurants, hotels and independent merchants. ‘Our yields are up 30% from 2025 and akin to 2023,’ Driver explains: a year that produced what's known as a bumper crop.
He and his wife, also called Sarah, bought the farm where Rathfinny now sits in 2010 after both had made a fortune in the City. They converted the barns into accommodation and decided to become winemakers. A business such as theirs can take 15 years to become profitable — assuming there are no snags. Years like 2026 are few, far between and play an outsize role in ensuring that things break even.
Forty miles away at Nyetimber, the atmosphere is equally ebullient. ‘The year is tracking very closely to 2025,’ says Cherie Spriggs, the estate’s head winemaker (last year’s crop, though not as bountiful as 2023’s, was sweeter and of higher quality due to an exceptionally sunny summer). ‘We should produce about 1.5 million bottles this year,’ she continues, of which many will go to overseas markets such as China, Japan and Scandinavia. ‘It pairs well with the stalwarts of their cuisine,’ Cherie notes of these jurisdictions, ‘primarily fresh fish.’
Although Nyetimber does not yet allow purveyors to buy bottles en primeur, such an allocation could easily become more desirable for English wines in the future, Cherie warns. As vintners like herself celebrate outlier status in a landscape that has borne, overall, less than it usually would, this is a space well worth watching.
This feature originally appeared in the October 14, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.