Crafting exceptional English wines | Jonathan White, Gusbourne

‍Your career to date speaks for itself but what made you seek a role in the wine business when you were setting out?

‍Convenience and career progression, believe it or not… I wanted to pursue a marketing-focussed direction in the early stages of my career, and I saw what sounded like a very enticing marketing position advertised at an office locally, which happened to also offer my first step towards marketing management. So I applied…. It just so happened that I was applying for a position at one of the world’s leading fine wine merchants, Berry Bros. & Rudd. I was immediately captivated by the business, and of course, wine, and have been ever since.‍

Having worked at BB&R with its history in the trade spanning 326 years how does it feel taking the reins of a business that is 20 years old?‍

It’s a little different! But equally very similar. BB&R were often criticised for being too traditional and old-fashioned. However, as Simon Berry once told me, to be successful as a private, family business for such a long time, of course BB&R had to innovate, change, and overcome challenges that the various different centuries over 300-years presented. It’s a similar story at Gusbourne where we are part of a pioneering movement of English producers, challenging wine trade expectations and proving that a spirit of adventure and desire to succeed tends to overcome challenges and ensure progress.

It is a notable point of course that our Gusbourne story is relatively young, but the story of the land on which we grow our vines and craft our wines is rich and engaging. We very much view our role as custodians of the Gusbourne Estate - who knows who will control it in several hundred years time? What we do know is that the original Gusbourne Estate was rather more medieval. Tracing its history back to 1410, the estate was then the domain of landowner John de Goosebourne. Fast-forward back to present day and look at the elegant, line-drawn goosemark logo that represents our identity on our bottles, accessories, stationery, packaging and all our branded materials. This goosemark references the original de Goosebourne family crest, which continues to be displayed in the village church in Appledore, with its three geese and an ochre-coloured horizontal band. The modern-day goose is looking over its shoulder at the family crest, acknowledging the association and history of the site. It’s our way of respecting history and tradition whilst driving change and modern craftmanship as current day custodians. We’re really proud of it.

‍What is your favourite wine from Gusbourne and why?‍

My initial favourite was our Blanc de Blancs. I remember standing under the oak tree on the decking in our Boot Hill vineyard on one of my first days at Gusbourne, just after the 2018 harvest, and tasting Blanc de Blancs with our then CEO and Chief Winemaker Charlie Holland. The layers of complexity and beguiling nature of tasting the purity of that wine alongside the salty tang of the breeze in the vineyard is a wine moment I will always find hard to beat. But then we released our first Blanc de Noirs a few years later and the rich, brooding nature of these wines made them an instant favourite for me and my wife and our friends. I have been sold on our Gusbourne's Blanc de Noirs ever since.

‍What keeps you busy when you are away from the office?

‍Great food, travel, family-time and sport – playing, watching and reading about!

‍Where is your go to destination for some R&R?‍

During the international travel restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, we took several trips to the Isle of Wight and it is now our favourite place to staycation. I also love southern Spain - sea-swimming, shellfish, and lots of Albariño. In fact, I love the IOW for the same reasons,  albeit with less guarantee of consistent sunny weather.

Having been Marketing Director for Gusbourne you know the brand inside and out, what do Gusbourne do better than anyone else?‍

What I inherited at Gusbourne when I first joined in 2018 was a business that took great pride in its identity and that was genuinely brand led. That is a fantastic platform for any marketing-focussed individual. What makes the business so connected to its brand is what makes it so special. We have a fantastic Gusbourne culture amongst our team and everyone truly lives the brand and its core values in how they conduct themselves, in whatever role that they perform. It’s quite remarkable how invested our entire team is with the brand and that unquestionably contributes significantly to its effectiveness.

‍You grow all your own grapes, why is this an absolute must for Gusbourne?‍

It’s another proof point for how connected our business is, this time in terms of product development. We choose to only use grapes we have grown in our winemaking because we want to ensure full control over the entire growing cycle, managing the health of our vineyards from vintage to vintage. This is important to us from a sustainability point of view, but also from a quality perspective too. Always making decisions that are right for the land and that year’s harvest. This is especially important because we only make vintage wines. Our wines always tell a story of a time and place. We need every year to be a vintage year, so it is crucially important that we tend our vines with thoughts on the short-term quality of each vintage and the longer-term prosperity of the vineyard too. It’s fantastic to be so connected strategically.

How has the changing climate in the UK worked in your favour and what does this mean for the traditional heartland of wine production in France?‍

Over the 20 years we’ve been growing grapes at Gusbourne, we’ve seen change in the climate. Take the harvest dates: in the first few years, the majority of harvests started in October. In the last 10 years, seven or eight of our harvests have started in September. Some of that change could be down to practices in the vineyard, or other factors, but it’s significant. The key factor is the number of growing days, and the warmth over prolonged periods, which we’ve had in the growing seasons more recently. The level of ripeness that we can achieve in our fruit now just wasn't possible 15 years ago. So we're seeing levels of warmth and sunshine increasing and we're able to ripen the grapes to a much higher level than we used to. Referring to climate change as a positive is not something we are comfortable with, but it is clear that without the changing climate, new industries such as wine production in England would not be possible to the same extent as they are now without it.

The Champenoise are tending to experience growing seasons that are much shorter now due to the increase in temperatures across the season. They’re having to pick much earlier than ever before. You generally need a hundred days from the grape vines flowering to when you actually pick the grapes. And what that allows you to do is develop all this lovely flavour, but still retain this great acidity, which is the backbone and the structure of the wine. Having to pick earlier means not having that length of time on the vine, which affects the flavour and concentration of the finished wine, especially for houses that produce mainly vintage bottlings. We’re starting to see many Champagne houses produce more still wines now as a result, for example.

‍You produce a range of still wines and sparkling wines, but we are particularly excited about your still Rosé given the time of year. As one of the more recent additions, has this been well received?‍

Absolutely, we first produced a vintage in 2018, under 1,000 bottles as an experiment. We sold the wines over the course of two-weeks at The Nest and decided to make it a permanent part of the range, with the latest version of packaging being released for the first time to celebrate the 2022 vintage, released in 2023. We produced a small number of magnums from the 2023 vintage, which we expect our wonderfully supportive members to snap-up when they are released this spring.

‍Tell us more about the Extra Brut Agrafe which is a first for Gusbourne – and for English wine as a whole?‍

In winemaking, progress isn’t always made by moving forwards. Sometimes we need to circle back to older ways of doing things – embracing tradition and challenging convention. Our latest release is the absolute embodiment of this idea. It’s a first for Gusbourne – and for English wine as a whole – our debut agrafe bottling. Agrafe, which means “staple” in French, is a way of closing a sparkling wine so it’s aged on cork from the get-go. It’s an incredibly labour-intensive process: every step – from bottling to disgorgement – must be done by hand.

Usually, when we first bottle our sparkling wine, it’s closed with a crown cap – a bit like a beer bottle. When you swap this for a cork and agrafe staple, you see the benefit of cork ageing in much younger wines. There’s more oxygen interaction with the wine, plus you get the flavours and aromatic compounds which come from cork ageing earlier in the process.

So, when our cork producer Amorim approached us in 2018 to trial agrafe closures, we jumped at the opportunity to compare the agrafe with our usual ageing method. It’s fascinating to see how it evolves, and highlights another way in which we continue to innovate at Gusbourne.    

‍What do you feel are the current challenges for the development of both English still and sparkling wine abroad?‍

Simple. Resource – time, people, and investment. When we speak to distributors and consumers, they’re tremendously excited about English wines. But we need to raise awareness. Collaboration amongst producers, working together to activate and educate overseas markets is a must to build on a very promising start and undoubted interest. International sales growth is a very exciting prospect.

‍With record breaking harvests in 2023, how does Gusbourne ride the wave of varying yields each year?‍

2023 was record breaking in terms of yields, but what is more important from our perspective is the quality of the harvest and we certainly expect to make another vintages of world class sparkling wines. Because we conduct rigorous green harvests (to thin the crop and ensure remaining grapes per vine benefit from the full vigour of the plant, increasing concentration, ripeness and ultimately flavour), our yields do not actually vary too widely from year to year.

Bottle design and packaging is all part of the allure of a luxury product, how do you make sure your products stand out?‍

By connecting our consumers with the products, presenting them in an enticing, elegant and progressive way, but always being mindful of sustainability and ensuring we utilise materials which are ethically produced or sourced. Our English Rosé is a good example of how seriously we take packaging, developing a packaging solution which enables consumers to buy with their eyes in a very different way to how they do with our usual more reserved darker glass and pastel colour pallet. We think about every product and its individual identity, designing packaging to showcase its personality.

‍We very much share your view that the difference between great and exceptional is in the details. You talk about the combination of traditional winemaking techniques, innovation, and minute refinements being at the heart of Gusbourne, without giving too much away, are you able to share some of your favourite innovations in winemaking over the last few years?‍

The most obvious place to see notable innovations is in our Winemaker’s Edition wines, which we have brought to market in recent years. They celebrate experiments that have worked and enhanced our wine production techniques. But we view all experiments to be successes, whether they provide a positive or negative result. We will have continued learning… Perhaps the most exciting opportunity we have, however, concerns our broader business and the prospect of truly demonstrating the desire to innovate in our sales and marketing activities, as well as in the vineyards and winemaking. I really want to see the whole business innovating on a regular basis.

‍What can we expect to see from Gusbourne over the next 5 years?‍

The continuation of our mission - utilising our detail-obsessed, sustainable approach to craft, sell and serve world-class English wine.

‍Jonathan White‍

CEO, Gusbourne

W: Gubourne‍

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IG : gusbourne_wine