Cheers! East Sussex winemakers harvest bumper crop

Vineyards across East Sussex are reporting a bumper crop this year. The 2026 harvest at Rathfinny Wine Estate, Alfriston concluded as 'an exceptional, record-breaking success' and 'one of the defining vintages of our generation' by owner Mark Driver. There has been a 30 per cent yield increase and total production is expected to result in 30,000 cases of sparkling wine.

Following an unusually hot and dry growing season on the South Downs the estate secured its second largest harvest to date and its ripest fruit on record. Despite the lack of rainfall, Rathfinny's vines remained healthy and balanced, which the estate attributes to its chalk soils and position only three miles from the coast. Chalk, they say, acts as a natural reservoir capable of storing more than 400 litres of water per cubic metre beneath the surface and releasing it gradually during prolonged dry periods, while the sea naturally moderates temperature and frost risk.

Alice Pippard of Beacon Down Vineyard which occupies 18 acres of the High Weald in Browns Lane, Cross in Hand, thanks all those who helped bring in the crop and said: "It's been a brilliant year and we are now busy turning it into all the lovely wine." She said the grape picking had finished three weeks early and the quality is proving 'excellent'

Wines from other vineyards such as Hidden Spring (Horam,) Bluebell, (Uckfield) and Ridgeview (Ditchling Common) also report excellent yields and owners are confident they can convert these sunshine-ripened grapes into wines that mirror the best in Europe. Many, particularly the sparkling wines, have already won blind tasting competitions and come out ahead of their French rivals.

French viticulturalists themselves are also buying up tracts of land in Sussex which, they say, apes the soil structure and climate of the wine growing regions of Champagne and the Loire.