Watch more of our videos on Shots!
and live on Freeview channel 276

In the year that Sussex vineyards received the highest accolade of protected designation for their wines, Editor-In-Chief Gary Shipton visited the revered Wiston Estate where a major investment in a new restaurant and tasting rooms is raising the benchmark still higher.

As we clambered into the agricultural vehicle there was the same excited anticipation that Indiana Jones must have experienced as he headed off in pursuit of the Holy Grail.

We weren't merely being navigated across a West Sussex farm - we were in search of the very essence of one of the county's finest creations.

The immaculate rows of vines bathed in the summer sunshine of 2022 may not, at first glance, have seemed the stuff of which dreams are made.

Kirsty Goring examines the vines at Wiston Estate

But with extraordinary passion, skill, investment and time, this latest crop will transition into some of England's - and indeed the world's - finest sparkling wine.

How the Wiston Estate at North Farm, Washington, became a premiere global wine producer is itself the realisation of a personal vision - underpinned by grit, determination, an enormous amount of courage, family resilience, prayer, and of course the perfect chalk landscape.

When Pip Goring arrived at Wiston in 1972 she dreamed of planting a vineyard to evoke her childhood in South Africa’s Western Cape.

The roots of her vision also drew on the rich history of this place. Two thousand years before Pip and her husband Harry settled there, the Romans were the first to grow grapes on the soft chalk slopes of the South Downs.In 2006 history repeated itself as the Goring family planted a south-facing 16-acre site with Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay vines.

Making the finest sparkling wine at Wiston Estate, Sussex

In the same year, their son Richard moved back to the Estate with his wife, Kirsty. As newlyweds, the couple had found a new passion for the land whilst working on small scale organic farms in western Canada.

In the 15 years that have followed, the most amazing sparkling wines have flowed from this quiet corner of West Sussex - the blanc de blancs, the blanc de noir, the rose, the brut, and an extraordinary range of vintage and multi-vintages … let's not call it ‘non-vintage’, Kirsty rightly suggests on our wine tour.

No wonder that Wiston along with so many other great vineyards across the sweep of the county this year secured Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) for wine, meaning Sussex gets Champagne-style status, intended to guarantee quality and geographical provenance.

There is no greater mark of success.

How one woman's dream to create a vineyard in West Sussex has enabled an historic estate to follow in the footsteps of the Romans