The Electric Acid Man

Dermot Sugrue is one of English wine’s finest – many say the finest – winemakers, known for his audaciously nervy sparkling wines, which have an impressive capacity to age. The Irishman, who grew up in County Limerick, is also one of the industry’s best talkers, as a short sample of rollicking Sugrue chat, delivered as we drove through springtime Sussex, to Bee Tree Vineyard from which he runs Sugrue South Downs with his wife Ana, will demonstrate. Given the runaway success of his first still chardonnay release, called “Bonkers”, I had asked whether he’d always had an eye on still wine.

The short answer would be, “No.”

Sugrue’s response gives a helpful rundown of the depth and calibre of his experience. “Starting [my own] project [on the side in 2009] I was absolutely specifically about sparkling wine and the enormous potential of it, which I’d learnt at Nyetimber [where he started as assistant winemaker in 2003] and then wanted to exploit, explore shall we say, on chalk at Wiston Estate [in Sussex, which he helped set up and worked on for the Goring family from 2006]. That was a huge draw for me to plant that vineyard – Wiston – on chalk because I was a complete Côte des Blancs Champagne nut.”

The Sugrues bought Bee Tree three years ago, after Dermot resigned from Wiston in order to devote his full attention to his own label, transforming an old tractor shed into a winery and attracting some seriously savvy (and starry) investors including Angela Hartnett, Robin Hutson who founded the Pig hotels and the actor Hugh Bonneville.

Sugrue came over to England in the early nineties after a stint working in a beef abattoir to fund him through a media studies degree in Norwich, chosen because it was cheaper than the journalism course at London’s City University that he had really wanted to do. Shortly after starting, though, Sugrue realised his real interests lay elsewhere and switched to Environmental Sciences, a move that necessitated going over the head of the course tutor, who had said, “No,” to the University Chancellor. “The media studies course was cobbled together. I told him I’d worked in a meat factory for 14 f*cking months to come here!”

I have no doubt Sugrue could talk his way out of or into anything. In his first jobs after graduating, working in financial services, being “good at talking” was what he relied on. He was spending all his disposable income on Barolo and Barbaresco and Bordeaux but he hated the day job and talked his way into doing a harvest with Anthony and Lillian Barton in St Julien in 2002 (there’s a random side-story about Lillian later going to Ireland where Sugrue’s mother helped her buy a horse). And that was it. A course at Plumpton then the jobs at Nyetimber and Wiston followed.

Along the way, Sugrue has also consulted or made wine for a constellation of other producers, so if you’ve drunk a few bottles of English wine over the last two decades you’re very likely to have sampled one in which he had some sort of hand.

The Sugrue style, like his speech, is instinctive but also fiendishly precise. Electrifying acidity is a salient characteristic of English sparkling wine and one that Sugrue takes to an extreme, yet in his wines the acidity is compelling rather than disrupting, driving the wine forward. I came to understand this after meeting Sugrue in 2012, when he gave me an unlabelled bottle of the Trouble with Dreams 2009, the first of his own wines, made with grapes grown at Storrington Priory Vineyard. Even for a sparkling wine – they are notoriously acidic in youth – this wine was incredibly keen and tensile. A few years later, I tasted a more mature bottle and saw how beautifully and elegantly the wine had developed: a lesson that stayed with me.

Today the Sugrues farm several vineyards across the South Downs, for their sparkling wines, impressive artefacts that are made for ageing, and for Bonkers, a truly excellent still chardonnay. Sugrue also makes a still pinot noir – surprisingly Bordelais in structure – using grapes from the Crouch Valley.

If you want to catch him in full flow, get on the mailing list for Sugrue Sundays at which topflight chefs come cook at the vineyard for a very limited number of guests. All tickets for 2026 sold out long ago, though you can still pick up a ticket for a dinner he’s hosting at Squisito restaurant as part of the Winelands Festival in Lewes on 10th June, or for one at Thyme in the Cotswolds on 29th July.

But also, if you haven’t already, try the wine: it’s seriously impressive.

Victoria Moore is an acclaimed British wine writer and columnist for the Telegraph, known for her sharp palate and trenchant opinions. Author of the award-winning wine and food bible, the Wine Dine Dictionary, she blends deep expertise with cultural flair, shaping how modern audiences enjoy and talk about wine.

You can find her on Instagram page at how_to_drink