January is the perfect time to reflect on the previous year’s grape harvest; all the wines have now finished fermentation and I am in the process of tasting each barrel and running some checks to find out where each wine is at, which will inform the next steps in the cellar.
Havesting the Bacchus at Lion's Walk Vineyard
The 2025 growing season in England was a belter. A warm spring followed by a hot and dry summer set things up nicely, and some growers were harvesting as early as the last week in August, unheard of for England. The first grapes to come through the cellar door at Gutter&Stars were picked on 9th September, which is the earliest we’ve ever picked. The last pick was some seven weeks later on 28th October. It was a long harvest, but fruitful, and apart from a patch of wet, cold weather in late September, everything worked out well.
The cellar is as full as ever with nine different wines planned from the 2025 vintage, including an orange Pinot Gris, a pink cellar blend and two Pinot Noirs. There will, of course, be single site, single variety releases of Chardonnay, Bacchus, Ortega and Sauvignon Blanc too. It’s going to be a busy spring getting many of these into bottle and onto the market.
For now though the cash-register is silent as I sold out of wine just before Christmas. There was a mad rush from private and trade customers from early December sparked by the release of a new Pinot Noir which went down very well, and a handful of Christmas pop-ups and Open Days. This meant that for the first time in years I could put my feet up for the final few pre-Christmas days and not have to worry about selling those extra few cases.
A new Chardonnay
We won’t be dry of stock for long though as two new wines are ready for release over the coming weeks. The first is named There Goes the Fear, after the 2002 hit single from Manchester band Doves, and is a Chardonnay from the 2023 vintage.
Made from grapes grown at Missing Gate Vineyard in Essex’s Crouch Valley, it is a bright and precise expression of English Chardonnay, with ripe orchard fruits, delicate spice and focused, citrus-flecked acidity.
Picked by hand this small parcel of Chardonnay (aromatic clone FR155) was whole-bunch pressed then cold-settled in tank for 24 hours before being racked into French oak barrels (ex-Burgundy, third and fourth fill). Alcoholic and malolactic fermentation took place simultaneously in barrel, and fermentation took 43 days.
The barrels were topped and the wine was matured on its gross lees with no battonage until May 2025 when it was blended and bottled. In total the wine spent 20 months in oak, adding roundness, body and structure to the bold tree/stone fruit and focused acidity. The wine has spent a further eight months maturing in bottle.
This release will be followed in February by Avalon, a premium white blend, also from 2023 and based around Chardonnay. This brings together Kent Chardonnay and Essex Pinot Gris - a wine that bridges the Thames Estuary, if you will. It’s made from five different clones of Chardonnay, all grown at Whitewolfe Estate in Kent, and a dash of spicy Pinot Gris from Bromley Brook Vineyard in Essex. Together they create a bright and glowing wine with ripe tree fruit, honeyed richness and precise acidity.
These two new wines will keep me busy until the spring releases of Bacchus, Ortega and Sauvignon Blanc, all of which will be bottled in late March for an early May release.
I am busy working on label designs for these at the moment with designer Ed Wright. Aside from the hands-on winemaking, this is one of the things I most look forward to most each year, shaping the look and feel of each wine, giving them a name and identity. Expect plenty of musical references on the labels, with Billy Bragg, Longpigs, Kate Bush and Joy Division all getting a nod in one way or another.
Collaborations
On top of these new G&S wines there are a handful of collaborations underway too, including an own-label wine for a Michelin-starred restaurant customer, a barrel-aged vermouth I’m making alongside a top-tier aperitif producer not far from Cambridge, and an English wine/English whisky barrel project.
The latter began last autumn and possibly won't come to fruition for a decade or more… with this one we are playing the long game. We’ve teamed up with Wylye Distillery in Wiltshire, a single malt English whisky distillery in the Wylye Valley owned and run by Sam Barber.
Between us we’ve hatched a plan for Gutter&Stars to 'season' four new French oak barrels - or casks as the distillers like to call them - with English wine, two white and two red, before Sam fills them with whisky.
So, while they say whisky on the front, the spirit comes later on in the journey. For now, the lovely virgin oak is getting to know the Crouch Valley Chardonnay and Pinot Noir introduced during the last harvest. Given the ripeness and quality of fruit in 2025, this is the perfect year to start a project like this, and while we expect the wines to see the light of day in a few years' time, the whisky will come much later. We shall wait patiently for that.
In the meantime, there are glass bottles and corks to order, label proofs to check and this year’s Wine Club to launch. Never a dull moment at Chesterton Mill.
