English Vine Time: Sparkling Wine in Sussex

Nov 1, 2026 · Tracey Delaney

English sparkling wine has been having a moment, and that moment is measured in years, not months or a single article. The chalk of the South Downs is the same seam that surfaces in Champagne, the climate has shifted just enough, and a generation of growers has had thirty years to learn what the land can do.

In June 2024 we boarded a Thameslink service from St Pancras International to Brighton to find out for ourselves: to taste the most interesting representative bottles, enjoy the estates, and meet some of the people making their mark in a category that has the prowess to rival Champagne.

We organised the day through a local wine tour company with a driver and were met at Brighton Station. A car with a driver is really the only way to do this properly. The estates sit apart from each other across the Downs and the Weald, with no direct transport links between them, and a good driver who knows the lanes turns a logistical puzzle into a pleasure and gets you safely around for the tastings.

Each estate had its own personality and its own style of hospitality, so across the three visits we experienced a real range, from new-wave art-house to established pioneer to small family farm. What they share is the thing that matters: a flavour profile with the precision, freshness and depth to stand next to the Champagnes most of us grew up on.

Artelium: where the art is the point

Our first stop was Artelium, at Malthouse Farm in Streat, a hamlet tucked between Ditchling and Plumpton at the foot of the Downs, about twenty minutes north of Brighton. It is the youngest of the three estates we visited, and the one that least resembles anything you would find in Champagne.

Artelium is the creation of Julie Bretland and Mark Collins, a husband-and-wife team who made their careers in tech before scouring the South Coast for land. Julie is Sussex-born, and Sussex won. They planted their first vines at Streat in 2018 and 2019, took a long lease on a second former dairy farm at Madehurst near Arundel (chalk, where Streat is clay) and launched their first wines in late 2020 with two vintages made by Dermot Sugrue, the winemaker behind Wiston Estate and arguably the most decorated name in English sparkling. There is no legacy estate behind Artelium; everything has been built from the ground up in under a decade, and the pace shows.

The name is the giveaway. Artelium is a wine estate built around art: the labels are commissioned from working artists, the tasting room doubles as a gallery with a rotating exhibition programme, and the converted farm buildings include the Skelton Workshops, the studio of the late letter carver and sculptor John Skelton, who spent fifty years working in the county. The vibe is contemporary and relaxed, a light tasting room and a terrace open Thursday to Sunday, with small plates of local produce alongside the wines.

A little something special : Artelium runs an "Artefact" series of numbered, small-batch experimental wines with one-off artist labels, alongside its core range, and even has a sister estate, Rickety Bridge, in Franschhoek, South Africa. It is hard to think of another English producer with a foot in the Cape winelands.

The sparkling line-up (cellar-door prices, autumn 2026):

They also make a well-regarded still Chardonnay, a still Rosé, a Pinot Gris and a Pinot Noir, plus a Sussex brandy from Chardonnay aged in French oak. Expect to pay roughly £38 to £50 a bottle for the sparkling wines, which puts them squarely in the middle of the English sparkling market.

Ridgeview: the pioneer that proved the point

If Artelium is the new wave, Ridgeview is the estate that made the wave possible. It sits on Fragbarrow Lane at Ditchling Common, a few minutes from Artelium at the foot of the South Downs, about ten miles from Brighton and seven miles from the sea. If you only have time for one estate, this is the one to build the day around.

Mike and Christine Roberts planted the first vines here in 1995, with a single-minded idea that was close to eccentric at the time: make only traditional-method sparkling wine, from only the three Champagne grapes, on English chalk. Mike trained at Plumpton College ten minutes down the road, built what were then England’s first underground wine cellars, and became the figurehead of the whole industry, chairing English Wine Producers and collecting an MBE in 2011 for services to English wine. He died in 2014, and Ridgeview is now firmly a second-generation family business: daughter Tamara Roberts has been CEO since 2013, son Simon Roberts is head winemaker, and Simon’s wife Mardi and Tamara’s husband Simon Larder are both deep in the operation. They make around half a million bottles a year, which makes them one of the largest producers in the country, and it still feels like a family farm with a very good restaurant attached.

The hospitality here is the most developed of the three. There is a cellar door and wine bar overlooking the vines, a tour through the working winery and cellars, and The Rows & Vine, a vineyard restaurant doing seasonal plates on a terrace that looks straight up at the Downs. We had lunch here alongside a tasting sample of their sparkling wines serving up a delicious pairing set amongst a beautiful backdrop of vines.

A little something special: In 2010 Ridgeview’s Grosvenor Blanc de Blancs 2006 was named the best sparkling wine in the world at the Decanter World Wine Awards, beating every Champagne entered. That result, more than any other single moment, is what persuaded the wine trade to take England seriously. Ridgeview has been poured at every Buckingham Palace state banquet since 2008, was the official wine of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, was served to Barack Obama, and is the only English sparkling wine on the list at the Royal Opera House.

The line-up (cellar-door prices, autumn 2026):

The three NV "Signature" wines, each named after a London neighbourhood, are the backbone of the range and the best value in this article at £34 to £40. The vintage wines step up to £60 to £85, and magnums of Bloomsbury go for £85. The OurView wine club takes 20% off everything. They have also recently added a still Chardonnay and a still Rosé at £27.50 each, which tells you something about how the English climate has shifted.

Highweald: An estate for the ages

Our last stop took us north off the chalk and into the Highweald, the wooded, rolling country of ancient clay and sandstone that gives the estate its name. Highweald Wine Estate sits on Deaks Lane at Ansty, between Cuckfield and Haywards Heath in West Sussex, inside the Highweald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty with a south-facing slope looking back towards the Downs. It is the quietest and most rural of the three, and by the end of the day the most surprising.

Highweald was planted in 2016 with 120,000 vines and a stated ambition to make the finest sparkling wine "with no compromises". The first harvest came in 2018, and the very first release, the Brut Reserve NV, walked into the 2022 International Wine Challenge and came out with a Gold, the English Sparkling Trophy, the Non-Vintage English Sparkling Trophy and Best Wine in First Year of Production. Newcomers do not usually do that. The estate is part of Highweald Beverages, a small Sussex drinks group that also owns the 360° Brewing Company and Conwy Brewery in Wales, which was set up by Robin Langton, a former chief operating officer at Ridgeview. The group has since bought two more Sussex vineyards, Lakestreet from Fox & Fox and Pookchurch, a long-time grape supplier to Bolney, taking it to around 124 acres under vine. Today the day-to-day team is led by managing director Neil, a drinks-industry veteran who cheerfully calls himself "the new boy", with winemaker Colm Evans, a chemistry graduate who made wine in New Zealand, California, Australia and France before coming home to set the winery up from scratch in 2021, and Tilly, the estate dog, who runs the place.

We had a private walk through the vines and the winery with the team, then a tasting back on the veranda of the Garden Bar. Because sparkling in England now comes in more than one form, we opened a bottle of Awa from The Sparkling Sake Brewery, which I co-founded, alongside the Highweald Brut: sparkling sake brewed in England next to sparkling wine grown in England, both made the slow way, and the table was unanimous that they belonged together. The Garden Bar runs Friday to Sunday in season, and if you cycle in without a booking, as one reviewer did from London, they will still find you a glass.

A little something special: Highweald’s soils were laid down when Sussex was sub-tropical, and they are what remains of the Weald-Artois Anticline, the same buried fold of rock that resurfaces across the Channel around Artois in northern France. So while the Downs estates share Champagne’s chalk, Highweald shares its older bedrock. Look out too for the estate’s resident white robin, which the assistant vineyard manager will happily introduce you to.

The sparkling line-up (cellar-door prices, autumn 2026):

Highweald also does a line of still wines, which are startlingly good value for England: the Lake Street Chardonnay 2022, Ghyll Valley White and Hickstead Rosé at £18, and a Wild Ferment Chardonnay 2023 at £25 that the team describe, not entirely jokingly, as England’s answer to the Mâconnais. Build-your-own cases of 12 and 24 take 10% and 20% off.

Back to Brighton

The day ended where it began, at Brighton Station, with a bag a few bottles heavier and a much clearer sense of what English sparkling wine actually is. It is not a novelty and it is not an imitation. Across three estates within half an hour of each other we tasted a thirty-year-old pioneer, an art-house newcomer and a quiet farm that beat the field with its first release, and every one of them poured something I would happily put on a table next to a grower Champagne.

What it cost. At the time of our visit in June 2024, the day came to £500 for two (£250 per person) for the three estate visits, tastings, transport, bookings and the driver;s company and local knowledge; lunch was on top. The company we used is unfortunately no longer running tours.

Practical notes. Thameslink runs direct from St Pancras International to Brighton in roughly an hour. All three estates open to visitors Thursday or Friday through Sunday and tours book up in summer, so reserve ahead. Many estates offer free UK delivery over a modest minimum, which solves the bottles-on-the-train problem.

Wine prices quoted are cellar-door prices from each estate’s own website as of November 2026 and will change with new vintages.

Sources: Artelium shop · Artelium story, Sussex Modern · Artelium, Vineyard Magazine · Ridgeview shop · Ridgeview’s Mardi Roberts, Sussex Modern · Highweald shop · Highweald, Our Story · Highweald at IWC 2022 · Highweald expansion, The Drinks Business

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