Simpsons Wine Estate

Charles and Ruth Simpson took a route to English winemaking that most English winemakers haven't: they went to France first. For two decades before planting their Kent estate, they ran Domaine de Sainte Rose in the Languedoc, a 40-hectare property in the Hérault that taught them how to make wine in a serious, commercially ambitious way at a meaningful scale. When they planted 38 hectares at Barham in the Elham Valley in 2012, they brought that French experience with them and applied it to Kentish chalk with the disciplined rigour of people who had spent twenty years learning to grow grapes in difficult conditions.

The estate sits six miles southeast of Canterbury on soils that are as chalk-rich as any in Kent, and the combination of the terroir's character and the Simpsons' winemaking philosophy produces wines of unusual range. The Canterbury Reserve sparkling and the Blanc de Blancs fulfil the Kent-chalk brief that visitors might expect, but what distinguishes Simpsons from nearly all of its English contemporaries is the commitment to still wine: by 2025, 60 percent of production consists of still bottles, including the Roman Road Chardonnay, the Railway Hill Pinot Noir, the Derringstone Pinot Gris, and the Hoopers Bacchus. This is not an estate that produces still wine as an afterthought to a sparkling programme; it is one that treats still and sparkling as genuinely equal propositions.

The export commitment reinforces this international ambition. At peak, Simpsons exported half its production, making it one of the few English estates visible enough in foreign markets to compete with Champagne on its own commercial ground. Oz Clarke, who opened the winery, is not a man given to opening things that don't deserve opening.

The Glass House Tasting Room at the Barham estate is one of Kent's best. Bookable online, it offers a structured wine tasting experience that does justice to the full range of what Simpsons produces, from the mineral Blanc de Blancs to the still Pinot Noir. For anyone making a day of it from Canterbury, this is a logical pairing with the cathedral and the Elham Valley walk.