In 2022, just before one of the driest, hottest summers on record, we hand-planted 11,867 vines directly into pasture. Typically vineyards are planted by ploughing the entire site, then glyphosating (aka killing everything with an over-used chemical), before machine planting. But that is not regenerative, that puts all of the native seeds that are sleeping in your pasture at risk. Instead we individually dug every hole, leaving the living roots of the pasture as intact as possible.
We planted four varieties: Our whites are Souvignier Gris and Rinot, our reds are Cabaret Noir and Pinotin. They are disease-resistant, low-intervention varieties suited to organic and regenerative growing. We have never used a chemical on this land or on these vines. No herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, no synthetic fertiliser. Nothing that brings death - only the biology that brings life. Each year we spend around 6000 hours with our vines, it is painstaking, detailed and loving. When we prune, we hand paint the wounds with local organic honey.
In October 2025, we picked our first harvest: 234kg of Souvignier Gris and a flavouring of Cabaret Noir and 191kg of Pinotin. Rinot didn't make it to the press this year, the birds and the wasps got there first, and we've come to think of that as "nature's share". Because we farm without chemical intervention our wine is a true and honest expression of this particular chalk hillside in Kent - it actually has terroir, a rare thing in an industry dominated by conventional agriculture. The yeast that turns our complex sugars into alcohol is naturally occurring, helping us to create a completely unique wine.
A mature vine produces roughly 1.5 bottles a year. Ours are three years old and unproven - so future harvests could be bigger, smaller, or later than we hope. That's farming. It's especially true when you're farming in the face of climate change, without a single synthetic shortcut to fall back on.
