We occasionally use the phrase “heroic viticulture”, but in doing so we are most often conjuring up someone whose vines sit high up a mountain in the Swiss Valais, Aosta or Chile. Fifty years ago we might also have said it of people trying to make wine in Britain’s soggy climate, but in the 2020s, with some seriously fine red wine coming out of Essex, masterful wines of all types emanating from Monmouthshire in Wales, and sparkling wines which the wine competitions seem to big-up to rank alongside fine Champagne, then the United Kingdom may no longer come to mind as the outer reaches of the wine world.

And yet…just as people like Ben Walgate pushed the boundaries of British winemaking when he buried a few qvevri’s under an Oast house (hop kiln) at Tillingham in Sussex all those years ago, Matt Gregory is pushing another boundary. One of location.

Although Matt’s Walton Brook vineyard in the Leicestershire Wolds is not the furthest north of England’s commercial vineyards, it is the one with the highest profile, in what is, objectively, a relatively hostile environment. The east side of the county of Leicestershire is notoriously wet and windy, and once you get north of England’s sunshine county, Essex, the countryside might seem, to most observers, more suited to grazing sheep. Wool was, after all, the East of England’s great wealth provider in centuries past.

To succeed in growing grapes in these Wolds surely fits any sane description of heroic. To make natural wines, farming without synthetic inputs, is next level. Matt Gregory has somewhere around three hectares of land on a slope that faces south and sits at 100 masl. The bedrock is Jurassic limestone mud overlain with glacial deposits from a mere two-million years ago with (inter alia) flint, ironstone and quartz.

In 2008, 800 Seyval Blanc vines went in here, along with 800 Solaris, 400 Regent and 150 Madeleine Angevine. In 2009, 2,000 each of Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Bacchus vines were added. It’s a good mix of vinifera varieties and the classic hybrids planted in England originally in the 1970s, vines giving resistance to disease, especially the fungal diseases which are rife in warm and wet micro-climates like this one.

Whilst Bacchus is established now as a variety very much suited not just to the English and Welsh weather, but equally to an English vibe, those other four hybrid varieties seem to suit those winemakers opting to make natural wines with more zip and less alcohol in an English setting.

It’s funny but the trending subject in regenerative modern viticulture is PIWIs. PIWI vines (technically “pee-vee” as it is the acronym for Pilzwiderstandsfähige Rebotsorten) are effectively modern hybrids bred to stand up to the diseases made more prevalent by climate chaos, first among them being the different forms of mildew, but we were doing something quite similar in England in the 1970s, although to be fair the modern hybrids are many more in number, the result of decades of nursery work, much of it taking place in Switzerland today.

Matt took over the vineyard in 2020, converting the viticulture to organics. In the spring it looks like a wildflower meadow between the rows. Of the three hectares, Matt has two hectares planted to vines and the remaining hectare comprises “managed hedge-lines and headlands”. We’ll mention hedges later.

I first came across Matt in the years before Covid, introduced to him by his then agent Uncharted Wines (he’s now with Wines Under the Bonnet). I remember Rupert of Uncharted pointing him out at a tasting by telling me Matt had worked with Theo Coles. He knew, of course, that Theo, under his Hermit Ram label, makes my favourite wines in New Zealand.

Theo is himself a great boundary pusher too, making innovative natural wines in North Canterbury, on New Zealand’s South Island. Matt knew Theo first because they worked together in a branch of Oddbins in the early 2000s. They went on to work on a couple of projects together in Italy (where Matt has also made wines), before Theo headed back to find fame, at least among clued-up wine lovers, back in NZ.

Matt and I both know that Theo Coles’s Hermit Ram wines are beautiful examples of natural wine made in a marginal setting, as North Canterbury can be. The Coles philosophy is deceptively simple, but he thinks a lot about what he’s going to do, or likely, not do, before he does it. Matt has probably benefited a lot from Theo’s friendship.

Another string to Matt’s bow, those Italian wines, were made in Piemonte. There are still some wines available which were made by him in Northern Italy, just as there are still available wines made by Charlie Herring Wines’s Tim Phillips when he made wine in South Africa (with both being worth seeking out).

Matt doggedly pursues a low-intervention regime in the cellar, in this case situated in an old stable block a short drive from the vineyard, but over the border in Nottinghamshire, that Matt has made into a fully functioning winery now. It’s at Wolds Wine Estate, a totally separate business, but one for which Matt oversees production.

Everything begins on the sorting table, so to speak. Healthy grapes are a very important factor here. In fact, essential. Matt is a firm believer that “the vineyard is the birthplace of the wine” and if you are not going to throw on the chemicals you absolutely must have healthy and ripe fruit. Wild yeasts, no fining nor filtration, and sulphur only added if deemed absolutely necessary (and then never more than 20ppm) are the rules.

Unfortunately, Matt can’t get any certification, even organic, because the vineyard is surrounded by a 500-acre conventional farm. He just has to hope that there isn’t too much contamination from his neighbour. In making wine in this way, Matt believes his vineyard is able to express itself, in terms not just of the terroir, but also of the vintage year. As he says himself, he wants to make “not just English wines but […] somehow Leicestershire wines”.

Wines Under the Bonnet currently lists five wines from Leicestershire on their web site, although I’m not sure if they have yet to update the site to include Matt’s latest cuvée (more of which later). These are:

• Fizzy White – usually a blend based on Bacchus, in 2023 zero sulphur.
• Fizzy Pink – a new classic blend, of 50:50 Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris, in 2023 just minimal sulphur. It’s a grape mix which has become super-cool in Alsace.
• Field White 2023 – three quarters Seyval Blanc with c 20% Bacchus and 5% Solaris with varying degrees of skin contact, just 9% abv. 10mg/l sulphur at bottling.
• White 2023 – A varietal Bacchus, 80% macerated on skins for 6 weeks, the remaining 20% for just 10 days. 10mg/l sulphur.
• Orange 2023 – A skin-contact Solaris, 9 weeks on skins, then 8 months on fine lees in stainless steel. 10mg/l sulphur.

The wine we are missing is Matt’s new cuvée, Hedge Line. This 2023, a blend of Matt’s abovementioned hybrid varieties, is named after a hedgerow Matt is planting, via a crowdfunding campaign, in order to increase biodiversity, as well as to provide a wind break.

Generally, 2023 was a wetter than usual vintage but Matt is a master of canopy management. That, and a spectacular two-week spell of sunshine in September 2023, saved the day and even helped Matt harvest a bigger crop than usual. Hedge Line is a delicate wine, just 9.5% abv, and perhaps one full of unique flavours, although when pushed to name its bouquet and flavours I’d go with English apples over anything else.

There are, according to Matt, some new wines in the pipeline. A red from 2023 is awaiting release. It blends 70% Pinot Noir with 30% Pinot Gris, 25% being aged in an old Barolo cask given to him by Dosio Vigneti in La Morra. He says “it’s fairly grown-up stuff but still very English. Ought to be out in the autumn or so”.

The 2024 vintage saw a very small crop. There’s a fun pale pink waiting to be bottled, with a blend very similar to the red. This one fermented in an old Barbera puncheon (500-litres) from the Coppo winery in Canelli (Piemonte). He also says “there will probably be a light red/dark pink from 2024 as well, but I’m still working on that”.

What Matt is doing in the East Midlands is pretty astonishing. To make wines as good as these in this unreliable climate you need confidence and nerves of steel. You also need to be a very good winemaker. Pure insanity is just not enough.

Matt Gregory Wines can be sourced via Wines Under the Bonnet. Despite his small production I am seeing his wines in many of the best independent wine shops in England, and indeed Scotland.

You can also read more about Matt in Abbie Moulton’s excellent New British Wine (Hoxton Mini Press, 2023).

Uncharted Wines may still have some bottles, including some of the Italian wines. Bat and Bottle, the Italian specialist importer/merchant in Oakham also stocks Matt’s wines, primarily for local distribution but some of the wines are on their web site.

Go check him out!

*Photo Credits – first three, and final photos credited to Jojo Cooper Photography, used with permission from Matt. Label shots all mine.