“Everything old is new again. Maybe not. I come close sometimes to believing that nothing actually ever changes.”

If you’ve recently watched Season 9, Ep. 8 of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, in which he visits the city of Porto, this opening line may have also stuck in your head. The first sentiment there has been cycling through my brain recently. Over the past few years I have been looking for a way to visually bring together the wines we feel show our finest efforts in winemaking. I love our entry level wines, but there are reasons that certain cuvées command a higher price point and I wanted that to be reflected visually. The answer, was of course, to look to the past.

A label shared by the first ever release of Chardonnay and Traditional Method held the answer. Those of you who have followed along from the beginning and remember those, may have noticed this cropping up in the releases of our Qvevri Ortega and Pinot Noir Précoce last year.

Now the next few wines are nearly ready, and we’ll soon be at a point where the entire family will start to stand side by side, visually tying things together. Time moves differently in winemaking projects, and it can be a long while before an idea makes it from conception to fruition, and as a result the change can sometimes feel unnoticeable. But it is there.

SO…

The third wine to join this family is something very special.

There are things in the world that one can believe in, but don’t exist. Unicorns, say. And then there are things that are very, very unlikely to exist, but with belief, can. I don’t know, something like… a still Chenin Blanc, raised in Georgian qvevri, from fruit farmed biodynamically in the UK. Just 478 bottles of something like that…

Oh, and that’s what it is!

As far as I’m aware, this is something that has never existed before, and I’m so glad a few people did believe along the way, so that it now does. This week I opened a bottle of this wine, to write the tasting notes for its tech-sheet before release.

I got a little lost in the wine. It’s ethereal nature. It reminded me of drinking Dominique Belluard’s Le Feu with some friends a few years ago. It had so much to say, but did so very quietly, like the most pure glacial water. It is hard to explain, so I will just share some of the sentences I wrote down while tasting our Chenin Blanc. Please feel free to chuckle.

A greengage or mirabelle plum that wasn’t quite ready to leave the tree

I am Didimi from Dimi and this is my Krakhuna

Fennel, mint, wheatgrass & lemon verbena

The breath of someone chewing gum

Wildflower honey over fresh ricotta

If you would like to make up your own mind, please follow the link below to purchase a bottle. It’s a wine to spend some time with, to follow in the glass. I think those with the patience to tuck it away for a few years will be greatly rewarded too. Shipping next week.

And lastly – continuing on the old is new train of thought – we’ve uncovered some stock of a couple of wines that had been sold out. So if you’re in the market for some pet nat or orange wine please follow the links below to buy the very final bottles of PN23 and Orange Ortega, which are both now in quite a lovely place.

Adieu

SHOP NOW

We’re pruning, SNIP SNIP!

Pruning is personal. Facing each vine, you are given a moment to shape its future. Not just this year, in the growing season ahead, but in the years to come too. To make a wound now with the intention of giving each vine the best chance to grow in balance and give quality fruit over as long a lifespan as possible. To work with their strengths, and guide them through their weaknesses.

The cuts of previous years, visible in the wood, are sometimes a reminder of a previous mistake, a lesson learnt, or a small but proud achievement. The experience of living, unfolding in 30 seconds or so, over and over and over and over and over in front of you. Possibly with Hot Chip in your head, who knows…

If you hadn’t caught on by now, we have started the long process of pruning the vineyards. Over the next three months we will make our way through the different plots, getting everything ready for the spring ahead, taking the chance to train the team as we go, in what is such an important annual task. It is both a romantic and purely practical task and I think there is value in approaching it with both in mind, in equal measure. Long days outside through the winter may be bad for your circulation, but are good for your resolve. With the added blessing that we do not prune in the rain – to abate the risk of fungal infection. Less romantic, fungal infection.

Inside, the winemaking calendar rolls on, and we are tasting through all the different ’25s to check in on their progress ahead of our first spring blends. The last two wines from ’24 are just about ready to bottle before they have another rest before release, and excitingly, we are very close to the final wine from 2023 being ready to see the world.

After finishing our dosage trials, our first release of Traditional Method in a long time is almost ready to disgorge, making it one step closer to release later this year. A bit of time under cork and we’ll be good to go! Traditional by name, but the blend is far from – Pinot Noir, Müller-Thurgau, Chenin Blanc and Ortega… WHOOSH. Keep an eye out in a few months time for this one.

With these colder times, we’re turning to some of our more robust wines. Something to enliven the senses in these grey days! If you are reaching for the cheese (very accepted, and actually highly encouraged) our FLOR is the perfect wine. The third release of our smallest production cuvée, details in the link.

Or if you’re sticking to reds, our elegant and spicy 2023 Pinot Noir Précoce should do the trick. Go on…

SHOP OUR LATEST WINES HERE

Wine manager | Tierney Beames

October Wine Journal

Harvest is both a joyous and intense period. The culmination of an entire years work, leading to a single opportunity to do justice to everything that went into it. There are always surprises, and decisions made on the fly. A quick conversation or comment, eye contact and a nod before you commit and move on. For me, those are the moments of magic that take something from feeling rigid and choreographed into something fluid and natural, where the wines give you the chance to let them make themselves.

That being said, this kind of improvising only works when you’ve all rehearsed and learnt the same material. The winemaking and ‘the plan’ for this year is, I think, the most intentional it has ever been at Tillingham. The relatively young vineyards finally showing us the wines that ask to be made here. I can’t wait to share what we have in the works.

Harvest also presents many surprises outside of the winemaking, whether it is kit failing, getting stuck, not arriving, last-minute picks etc. etc. etc… So there is a long list of people inside and out of the winery that none of it would be possible without. To everyone who lent a hand, or a tractor lesson, or a morale-boosting double thumbs up, just a massive thank you.

Wednesday this week marked the end, with a final pick of an unlikely pairing for the UK – Pineau d’Aunis & Trousseau – which, after some foot-treading and slow pressing, are now happily co-fermenting in a 1300L fuder, which, after writing this, I will pop off to taste!

The winery is full to bursting, and after one final pressing in a week or so, the vessels will be put to bed. It’s a drastic change of pace, from the pedal-to-the-metal of harvest, to the quiet calm of ferments and wines slowly shifting in their vessels.

And with the end of harvest it suddenly feels like autumn proper. All the tell-tale signs. Which in Sussex happens to be a bonfire obsession. So much so, that the towns have to share them out over a string of weekends, with our first local one being Hastings this weekend.

There are wines for that kind of behaviour, naturally. Introducing the bonfire bundle, and the first opportunity to try our 2023 Pinot Noir Précoce, of which there are only 590 bottles. Allez.

Wine manager | Tierney Beames

YOU CAN BUY OUR BONFIRE NIGHT BUNDLE HERE OR PICK UP FROM THE FARM

September Wine Journal

This will be a short one folx because there are 7 tonnes of Müller-Thurgau on its way to the winery.

We’re mid-harvest… Things are rolling through nicely, and the winery is starting to fill up. Siegerrebe in steel, Ortega in qvevri, Regent in concrete, Pinot Gris all over the place, you name it, we’ve got it!  We’re tractor-ing, trailer-ing, forklifting, surprising visiting local businesses with 2 hours of hand sorting (shout out to the crew from The Union & The Plough), pressing and stomping all kinds of fruit. Despite the recent turn in the weather, everything is coming in clean, and we’re really excited about our winemaking prospects this year. If you’re visiting, please do say hey to the crew in the winery, ask what’s going on, and offer a morale-boosting double thumbs up.

This time of year is all about spinning plates, so alongside harvest, we’re also labelling some new releases. Next month should see our Qvevri Ortega, Pinot Gris & Pinot Noir Précoce all being released, so keep an eye out. We can’t wait to share these wines!

The turn in the weather naturally has us reaching for reds, so we’re leaning into drinking R at the moment. With lovely bright fruit and peppery tannins, it’s perfect with the endless pizzas that are fuelling the winery team…

Wine manager | Tierney Beames

YOU CAN BUY OUR R HERE OR PICK UP FROM THE FARM

August Wine Journal

”The year continues to lurch forward at breakneck speed! The summer season has been consistently hot, perfectly interspersed with rain along the way, meaning we’re looking at harvest being two to three weeks ahead of what we might consider a normal year.

Veraison is well underway, first spotted in the final few days of July, and now each day it seems another berry has miraculously changed colour overnight, bringing a new swathe of colour into the vineyard. For those not versed in this terminology, veraison is the time when the bunches of bright green berries begin to turn. Dusty pinks, bright cherry reds, heavy purples, and deep gold. It’s a beautiful process to watch.

As things shift outside, a game of cleaning Tetris has started inside. The summer is a downtime for the winery, so before harvest, we must dust off the cobwebs and JET WASH EVERYTHING. It’s not quite that simple, but the careful process of having every single piece of kit as clean as possible gives us the best possible chance of making the kind of wines we want to make. Working with minimal intervention does not always mean doing less, but acting with more attention to detail along the way. The old adage of ‘great wines are made in the vineyard’ might also read ‘great wines are made in clean wineries’…

One of the more exciting moments in this process has been the re-waxing of our Georgian qvevri. Something we are only doing for the first time since they arrived at Tillingham. An ancient method to reduce the porosity of the clay, whilst also acting as a natural antibacterial lining. With rollers and blowtorches feels a little punk, but the method seems effective. The comforting scent of beeswax has been tumbling out of the winery’s doors. Lovely to walk past.

Something that goes particularly well with the perfume of beeswax and English summer sunshine is a glass of rosé! We’re drinking all things pink to close out the summer holidays. We’d love to share that sentiment with you, so here’s a bundle of our PN23, Col ’23 PINK, and Rosé.”

You can BUY HERE

Wine manager | Tierney Beames