Limewood and The Pig Hotels founder Robin Hutson OBE backs Dermot Sugrue’s English sparkling wine brand
One of the UK’s leading boutique hoteliers has joined forces with two of Sussex’s most progressive winemakers.
Robin Hutson, co-founder of Hotel Du Vin, Limewood and The Pig Hotels, has ploughed investment into Sugrue South Downs, a boutique sparkling English wine brand run by husband and wife team Dermot and Ana Sugrue.
Dermot, who is widely recognised as the UK’s most successful and decorated winemaker, spent 16 years helping Harry and Pip Goring establish Wiston Estate in Pullborough.
The same year he joined Wiston, he set up Sugrue South Downs as a separate side project and three years later made his first own-brand wine, The Trouble with Dreams, made from grapes grown at Storrington Priory and Mount Harry Vineyard near Lewes.
A finalist in the 2022 BBC Drinks Producer of the Year, Dermot left Wiston earlier this year to focus fully on his own English sparkling wine brand and together with Ana, a winemaker in her own right and former lecturer at Plumpton College, is poised to make the first vintage from Hutson’s vineyard at The Pig in the South Downs, in Madehurst, later this year.
