Wines of Great Britain

Yeah.

It leads us into Charlie from Jackson Estate, who is also, uh, chair of Wine GB now.

Yes.

A really wide-ranging chat with him on kind of international approaches to English wine and, like his role at Wine GB and his background in wine.

So yeah, give it, give this one a listen.

[upbeat music]

Good, good wine, good food.

Having a good craic.

Yeah.

At the WineGB Awards, and then best...

Was it white wine or Chard- Chardonnay? I'm trying to remember for the trophy this year.

Oh, for this year.

I think from my perspective, you know, even if we enter Decanter or IWSC or IWC or Drinks Business or what- whatever it may be, I, I, I find, I find that, you know, it's always if you do win something or if you do sort of get a gold medal or a, you know, silver or platinum, whatever it is, I, I feel like it's just, it's a nice pat on the back.

It's, it's good recognition.

Um, in terms of WineGB Awards, it's really...

In fact, the WineGB Awards are really the only ones we enter, um, at this point.

We get fifty thousand visitors each year to our brand home in Tenterden and have upgraded our tourism experience there with the new Hythe Tasting Room.

We're now the leading site on TripAdvisor for UK wine tourism and won the WineGB trophy for Best Door-- Best Cellar Door, alongside thirteen gold medals for quality in that and other international competitions this year.

To help attract more millennials and Gen Z to our brand home in Tenterden, we ran our first Magnum Festival earlier this year, in fact earlier this month, uh, which was a sunny weekend of live music and great food and wines attended by over six hundred guests.

Transport from the local station and back was provided by us, and this helped us attract more people from a much wider area.

It's a type of grape that I think people need to explore a bit more.

We have won three WineGB awards for our 2024 duet, which is a Chardonnay Bacchus blend, 50% of our Bacchus and 50% of our winemaker's Chardonnay.

This year we entered our Bacchus 2024 and our Bacchus 2025, and both of them came out with a bronze medal.

I would describe Bacchus as sort of elderflowery, stoned fruits, So our 2024, I would say is very crispy and light, whereas our 2025 is still light, but it's more full bodied because we had a slightly different technique.

With a background in fashion and creative writing, Georgie leads product innovation and customer experience, bringing her innovative ideas to prototyping, packaging, social media, and branding.

Abingworth might be one of the youngest producers in English wine, but the team are already causing a stir, and recently picked up the trophy for best newcomer at the 2026 WineGB Awards.

Thank you for joining me, both of you.

Congratulations again on the recent award win.