Greyfriars was established in 1989 by two vets and it’s animal roots are still going strong with two competing horse vets on the site along with a hydrotherapy pool for dogs! The vineyard itself is just off the Hog’s Back (that’s a road name!), very conveniently only a 10-minute taxi ride from Guildford mainline station which is a swift 30 minute fast train from London.
The owners Mike and Hillary Wagstaff took over the vineyard in 2010 after Mike’s company was bought out and, too young to retire, he decided to put his engineering background to a different use. They took over the 1.5 acre site and have since expanded by planting over 70,000 vines to nearly 50 acres producing in the region of 100-150,000 bottles a year.
Along with their other Surrey Hills counterparts their main grape varieties are the classic Champagne varietals of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunièr. Making sparkling wine using the traditional method requires slightly less ripe (lower sugars) and slightly more acidic grapes than still wine production, which means the climate in Southern England is consistently warm enough, but not too warm, to produce high quality sparkling wine. However, they also produce a range of still wines including being one of the very few producers in the UK to grow and make a Sauvignon Blanc. The wines include:
- Non-Vintage (all priced at only £19.50 a bottle which is a delicious bargain amongst English sparkling wines):
- NV Sparkling Cuvée
- NV Sparkling Rosé
- NV Sparkling Fumé- made from 100% sauvignon blanc
- Vintage
- The Sparkling Classic Cuvée- currently 2014 vintage
- Their Signature Sparkling Rosé Reserve (currently 2015 vintage) has won awards including gold at the international wine awards
- 2014 Sparkling Blanc de Blancs – oaked and unoaked available
- As well as a limited edition (only 2400 bottles were made) 2015 Cuvée Royale
- Their still wines include:
- A Rosé- made from their Pinot Noir grapes, 2020 has just been released
- A Sav Blanc and a Chardonnay from 2018
- As well as Pinot Gris, both 2017 and 2018 available
The great thing about Greyfriars is that everything happens onsite, literally from bunch to bottle or from grape to glass as they have coined! Their grapes are hand harvested, taken to their slightly leaky warehouse where they are whole-bunch pressed and then fermented into the still base wine. Once they have decided on the style of wine being made they bottle for secondary fermentation by adding a little bit of sugar and yeast. The CO2 produced by this secondary fermentation is trapped in the bottle creating the fizz! Once the yeast has consumed all the sugar in the wine it dies and drops forming a fine sediment, known as the lees. The wine is aged on the lees for around 3-5 years depending on the vintage. Mike and Hillary have built a 3,500 square foot underground chalk cave with space for storing and ageing a quarter of a million bottles of wine! Once aged it’s back to the winery where their eclectic machines, from Italy (all instructions in Italian….ek), take the bottles and riddle, clatter, bump, freeze, pop, splash, cork, whizz, slap a label on and there we have it beautiful English sparkling. Yes there’s quite a lot of process involved in there and much more detail can be found on their website here.
So nearly 50 acres, making 100-150,000 bottles a year all on their own site…all done by the team of just seven at Greyfriars which includes their incredibly hands-on owners Mike and Hillary. Whilst they all have their roles, it’s a family-oriented team and everyone has a fantastic work ethic to muck in.
- Mike Wagstaff – owner and the winemaker, the annual dosage tasting is a thoroughly democratic affair amongst the team as long as everyone agrees with Mike!
- Hilary Wagstaff – owner and marketing, you can find some of Greyfriars bottles sold in local Waitrose thanks to Hilary’s tenacity
- David Line is the international rock star turned vineyard manager who works closely with assistant vineyard manager’s brothers David and Roman Hlavac.
- And their trusty sales team of Aaron Gilling and Guillaume Kaczmer
But you don’t need to learn any of this from me because Greyfriars do a fantastic tour and tasting. It’s educational, fun, you get to try a great selection of their wines looking out at the stunning views and you can take home your very own Greyfriars Glass. They even let me descend with a group of my girls…
During lockdown they have been busy building a stunning new tasting room where they are planning to expand their events and activities post lockdown including…
- Cheese and Wine Tasting
- Gin and Fizz Tasting
- And my personal favourite Vino Vinyasa – Yoga and Wine Tasting…what could be better!
You can also just book a table outside at the vineyard and enjoy sampling a few glasses from the range. Details of all their events, tours and table bookings can be found here.
And finally looking to the future the Greyfriars team are planning some exciting trials and experiments in both the vineyard and the winery, utilising modern grape growing and winemaking technology, to create a small range of great sparkling wines that reflect the unique geology, soil conditions, climate and heritage of the beautiful Surrey North Downs…so watch this space!
Love this 🙂