Sensational Sussex: an overnight stay at Rathfinny Wine Estate

“So I hear this is going to be one of the largest vineyards in northern Europe when fully planted?” I said to our guide Richard as we stood on a hillside on a particularly frigid evening in January overlooking the Rathfinny Wine Estate’s veritable ocean of wiry vines.

“Well, yes. Probably. It’s 350 acres,” he responded hesitantly. “But despite that, it’s not about quantity. For us it’s always about quality.”

I nodded silently, admiring the blue-grey twilight above the lopsided slope of the hills before us and imagining how glorious it would look in the summer. It sounds an innocuous moment, but this was the first time I hadn’t reacted to a sentence from Richard with a “what?!” or a “really?!” since commencing our tour an hour earlier, having been bombarded with head-spinning facts and figures as he laid out the vineyard’s plans.

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Ambition really is the life blood of the Rathfinny estate, situated in a sleepy valley just south of the Sussex village of Alfriston. Upon being invited to the estate for an overnight stay, I had envisaged something more low-key - perhaps a lazy weekend sipping one of a handful of batches of sparkling wine at the site’s rustic cottage before retiring early to bed.

But as we meandered between enormous warehouses, shuffling in and out of the shadows of eight-ton pressing machines and multimillion-pound custom-made bottling equipment, Richard would tell us that despite producing its first vintage only last year, Rathfinny is already on a collision course with some of Europe’s top producers.

“We intend on producing up to 1.2 million bottles per year by 2021,” he adds, before pointing to the largest warehouse on the estate and saying we “didn’t need to go in there” as it’s “just a storage facility for three million bottles”.

“Oh and by the way, all of these buildings were nominated for a RIBA archictectural award,” he added nonchalantly.

Rathfinny is the brainchild of Sarah Driver, an ex-city solicitor, and her husband Mark, who served as a hedge fund management group founder before deciding in 2009 to obtain a winemaking degree at Plumpton College. One £10m land purchase and renovation project later and Rathfinny Wine Estate was born in 2010.

Skip forward to 2019 and Rathfinny has only just released its long-awaited first products - two sumptuous vintage sparkling wines sold under the “Sussex Sparkling” label, which the winery has successfully sought to make a protected denomination.

The reason for the considerable delay in completing the first batch of Sussex is two-fold: first, the estate has been built from the ground up in painstaking fashion, morphing from empty field to one of the most technologically advanced wineries in the UK through pure manpower and patience in just nine years. Second, Sussex Sparkling is subject to a self-imposed rule which stipulates that the wines are aged for a minimum of 15 months to develop more complex notes of dryness, later aided in some batches by oak-barrel ageing.

But when the wine hits your tongue, it becomes clear that their perseverance - along with the astute decision to employ a winemaker from Champagne and a vineyard manager from New Zealand - has paid dividends. First is the 2014 Blanc de Blancs, produced from the estate’s Chardonnay grapes. It conjures up wonderful visions of old world French bubbly, with a fruity apricot sweetness on the nose giving way to citric notes on the palate and a sweet “apple strudel” finish, as they describe it.

The delightful 2015 Rose is next, aged on the lees for a full 24 months and comprised of a Provencal-esque mix of 50% Pinot Noir, 40% Chardonnay, 10% Pinot Meunier and a hint of barrel-aged Pinot Precoce for its pinkish hue. Here, the component flavours of Eton Mess are dominant, with rich strawberries and meringue coating the mouth before a hint of peach mousse round it off nicely.

Or so I was told. I had been proudly informed by almost all staff members at the estate that the first batch of 5,000 bottles ran out within months. Until the next harvest, these two wines are only available at the restaurant where we would thankfully be heading later.

Back in the confines of the reception, I processed the dizzying potential the estate had and began to wonder where this mindset had come from. But the estate’s website is rather telling, explaining that the Drivers had launched Rathfinny not as a mere hobby career, but instead with the “express intention of producing some of the world’s best sparkling wine”. Now that’s quite a pitch.

But while the thought of gargantuan bottling machines churning as wholesale orders are shipped off on express deliveries to the finest bistros in Hong Kong might induce headaches in some, make no mistake; the domestic charms of this down-home hideaway in rural Sussex are alive and well.

This is in no small part thanks to the estate’s on-site accommodation, The Flint Barns. This converted barn had once acted as lodging for the vineyard workers during the more intensive harvesting seasons but now contains an adorable 10-room hotel. Originally characterised by a mix of flint walls, exposed brick and iron girders, the building was snatched from the claws of almost total delapidation by the Drivers and converted into a homely inn.

The bedrooms here are stripped back, with a gorgeous metal bed frame acting as the focus of attention amid a cosy layout of varnished oak bedside tables and lagom-inspired wire shelving units. The Flint Barns are neither lavish nor indulgent; instead, the hotel has taken a deep dive into the idea of the digital and psychological detox, where minimalist rooms with no Wi-Fi implore guests to fully appreciate the tranquil bucolic scenes beyond their windows.

A highlight is the rather fabulous downstairs lounge, dotted with plush armchairs and an open fire that the receptionist gleefully ran outside to fetch firewood for upon our arrival. Guests can grab a glass of the estate’s wine from reception and curl up with a book or, on warmer days, recline outside with a local beer in the site’s adjacent courtyard.

At 7.20pm, we were called to the front desk by reception and whisked away for dinner at the on-site restaurant in a Rathfinny-branded minibus.

As the venue for the estate’s tasting sessions and masterclasses, the Tasting Room is the powerhouse of the complex, bursting with lively chatter and clinking glasses as waiters move to and fro. Here, we sampled the fragrant orange zest that permeates the estate’s Seven Sisters Gin (£39.50) and the umami notes of the Seven Sisters Vermouth (£25), before the two were combined into a stonking martini by our host Harry.

We were presented with a choice of three set menus - land, sea and garden - all fully seasonal and each with six courses complete with wine pairings. No matter what we chose, we knew we were in good hands. The Tasting Room is led by chef Chris Bailey, who made a name for himself working in London and Spain before being awarded a Michelin star at the Black Rat in Winchester.

I opted for the sea menu, which saw me blaze through a heady mix of delicate butter-poached lobster with sea kale and blood orange, a truly unique beetroot and daikon carpaccio with rich smoked eel and salty cucumber jelly and maybe the most exquisite cod loin this side of the Downs, topped off with mussels, parsley and squid ink.

Across the table my girlfriend took on the land menu, the highlights of which were a rich Pevensey lamb fillet with sweetbreads and tongue and the tender teal served with morel mushrooms and grape. We parted ways with the amiable staff and waddled back to our minivan extremely full, thoroughly satisfied and just a little bit woozy.

On the morning of our bleary-eyed second day at the Barns, after making the most of the generous fried breakfast in the adjacent dining room, we retreated to the lounge, wistfully preparing to head home.

Rathfinny has it all. It’s at once a delightful getaway destination amid the rolling South Downs, a first-class example of the power of locally sourced cuisine and, above all, a state-of-the-art winery showcasing the best of British winemaking and engineering, reinforcing the country’s status on the viticultural stage one bottle at a time. With wine this good, it’s only a matter of time before you too will likely be saying those words: “No thanks, I’ll have a Sussex.”