Dermot Sugrue - the Don Corleone of English wine

A visit to Sugrue South Downs to pay homage to the Godfather.

In a recent interview with The Buyer Peter Dean called Dermot Sugrue “unequivocally Britain’s finest winemaker” while his wife and business partner Ana calls him the Don Corleone of English wine.

Whatever you call him, there’s no doubt that Sugrue has done it all, winning pretty much every award going with his stints at Nyetimber until 2006 and then Wiston until 2022. In addition he’s made contract wines for Digby, Ashling Park and Jenkyn Place among others and worked with names including Henners, Hambledon, Westwell and others. If you’ve drunk English sparkling wine you’ve almost certainly tasted Sugrue’s work.

But after years of making wine for other people, he’s now devoted his time to his own label, Sugrue South Downs with some pretty impressive backers including Robin Hutson formerly of the Pig Hotels, Hugh Johnson and top actor Hugh Bonneville, aka “the two Hughes.” The first hire was Dermot’s Croatian wife Ana who brings a scientific approach to winemaking, “I’m more intuitive” he said modestly.

Dermot and Callum, note diggers in the background

For the first time, Sugrue South Downs now has its own winery not far from Plumpton in Sussex so my wife and I went down earlier this winter to pay our respects to the Don. I first met Dermot in 2022 when I was researching a book about English wine. I was on a press trip to Wiston where he was head winemaker. He arrived late covered in cuts and bruises having just been on his stag do. I had visions of him brawling with sailors a la Oliver Reed but he had actually fallen off his mountain bike. Or so he claimed.

He was just coming to the end of his time as head winemaker at Wiston and the full complicated relationship with Kirsty Goring from the family that owns the estate was on full display. After tasting the Wiston range, it was Dermot’s turn to show his own wines but Kirsty then appeared with another bottle of Wiston worried perhaps that his would upstage hers. There had clearly long been a tension between Sugrue’s role at Wiston and his own label which he had been making on the side since the 2009 vintage.

The wines from both labels ranged from good to about the best in England though some veered towards over-English for my tastes. There’s definitely a Sugrue style, lean and racy. Occasionally in the past I’ve found the wines too lean and racy. I struggled with the early Digby releases, but they’re wines that repay keeping.

There was clearly a deeper story about his relationship with the Goring family. Not to mention his time at Nyetimber when it was owned by songwriter Andy Hill and then promptly left when the current owner Dutch billionaire Eric Heerema took over. Sadly there wasn’t an opportunity to interrogate Dermot properly. On a couple of occasions, I tried to collar him for a longer interview but my timing wasn’t good. Never try to get hold of a winemaker between August and October. Consequently there was something of a Sugrue-sized hole in the book which not only rankled me but clearly bugged the great man himself as he wrote to me before our meeting last year: “Looking forward to seeing you again, last time at Wiston was for 5 minutes you bollox.”