Rathfinny Wine Estate

Rathfinny is English wine's most ambitious statement — and it is a statement on a chalk hillside above Alfriston that is visible from the sea. When Mark and Sarah Driver purchased the estate in 2010, they commissioned a winery designed by architect Spencer de Grey (former head of design at Foster + Partners), planted 600 acres of Champagne varieties on the South Downs chalk, and built accommodation in converted flint barns that allows visitors to wake up in England's finest vineyard landscape. This is not modesty. But it is backed, increasingly, by wines of genuine quality.

The chalk at Rathfinny is exceptional even by South Downs standards. The estate sits on a broad south-facing slope that descends through terraced vineyard toward the chalk cliffs of the East Sussex coast, and on clear autumn days — the kind of days that make the 2018 or 2022 English vintages memorable — you can see the coast of France from among the vines. The geological kinship with Champagne is, at Rathfinny, almost discomfortingly literal.

The Cradle Valley range — named for the local term for this valley — has improved considerably since the first vintages, as the vines mature and the winemaking team settles into the site's rhythms. The Blanc de Blancs has attracted particular critical attention, with its combination of chalk minerality, fine persistent mousse, and a depth of flavour that suggests the estate will produce genuinely great wine as the oldest vines approach fifteen years. The Blanc de Noirs, an unusual and ambitious choice for England, shows the Pinot Noir dominance of the site's upper slopes.

The Flint Barns accommodation, spread across converted farm buildings around the winery, allows overnight stays that combine estate dinners, cellar tours, and the incomparable experience of watching the South Downs mist burn off over the vines at seven in the morning. It is, without question, the finest wine tourism experience in England, and one of the better ones in the world.