A Biodynamic Approach
by Alex Moshakis
Ben Walgate, founder of Tillingham
In 2017 Ben Walgate signed a 25-year lease on 70 acres of rolling hills and woodlands in East Sussex, and established Tillingham, a small natural wine estate that incorporates a hotel and a Michelin Green Star-winning field-to-fork restaurant. Walgate grew up on a farm in the north of England. At Tillingham, he combines ancient farming and winemaking techniques with minimal amounts of modern science to create more than 25 styles of natural wine, while also committing to the long-term renovation of the farm and farmstead using a sustainable, biodynamic approach. We talked to Walgate one weekday morning while he sat in a repurposed Victorian farm building.
How did Tillingham come about?
My family were involved in farming – they've farmed for generations. When I was younger, I wasn't aware I was a farmer, and I never thought I'd end up one. I studied Classics and English at university and went off to have a career. But after university I travelled, and slowly became curious about wine and vineyards, and realised that there was a farming element of winemaking that felt really natural to me. I realised I could kind of have it all: the outdoors life, the creativity that comes with winemaking, that I could create something worthwhile and delicious, something you could actually taste the endeavour in.
What's the Tillingham approach?
At the heart of Tillingham is a way of winemaking, and a way of farming, that is sympathetic to nature – the more you foster that, the more you can taste it in the wine. I discovered the Tillingham estate five years ago. There are 70 acres here. It had been a farm for 800 years, but it was knackered, with old, derelict buildings. It was an opportunity. We took a lease on the land and buildings, and from that point on began to prepare the land, began to plant, refurbished and repurposed the farm buildings so it could become a tourism venue. Then we started making our own wine. We bought grapes in 2017, but it takes three years from planting a vine to getting grapes. In that time we bought other people's grapes and started experimenting.
The Victorian farm building
What was the pitch to the landowner?
It was kind of like: "This is the land, we can put this many vines in, this is why, this is how…" Partly because planting vineyards to make wine is a very long-term venture with a very slow payback, we said we'd turn the farm buildings into a hotel and a restaurant, elements that would raise cashflow sooner, but which would also fit with a holistic, field-to-fork vision I had of how the farm should operate. Now we have sheep on the land that we don't have vines on. And those sheep end up being in the vines during the winter. And we eat them on the menu. Elements from the restaurant and the winery, in turn, feed back into a composting system and into the fields. There are all of these complementary loops linking different parts of the business, zero-waste being a main part of the Tillingham idea.
Are there a set of Tillingham values you always have in mind?
The most fundamental thing is authenticity. That's what wine's ultimately about – it's about having a sense of place. I have a vision of how I want to make our wine and we stick to it. We've never made a wine to second-guess what people want, or to mimic a style that is fashionable. It's the same with the food. We use the ingredients we have, whatever's in season. It's very reactive and intuitive rather than prescriptive. We use what we've got and we celebrate it.
"At the heart of Tillingham is a way of winemaking, and a way of farming, that is sympathetic to nature."
How much is authenticity related to simplicity?
The more you intervene, the more you can get in the way of that authenticity. So simplicity is paramount. In a lot of our winemaking, we try to use gravity, and our hands and feet and heart and labour, rather than machinery. The more we eschew machinery and technology in the winemaking process, the more intact the wines remain.
When you make a wine, do you have a goal in mind?
We might make up to 25 different wines in a year. We have some styles we know we're going to make, but what I want most is for the wines to be as pure as they can be. We don't fiddle around, we don't intervene, so they end up in the best condition they can be: clean, fruit forward, really drinkable and enjoyable wines. A lot of winemaking science is about trying to shortcut or tweak the process. We've decided to go the way we go, and our wines take as long as they take.
Tell me a bit more about the farm you grew up on?
I come from a long line of farmers in the north east, south Yorkshire originally. My great grandfather expanded the family farms from Yorkshire down into Lincolnshire and Staffordshire and Cumbria. I was born into that world, but by then things had started to change. When I grew up we had livestock – pigs, cows, sheep, chickens – and it was pretty: rolling hills, woodlands, lots of arable farming, in what was a little hamlet. Up until quite recently, the number of people employed by the farm had dropped to two or three, and I found that upsetting. That decline has driven me and informed what I do. There were 16 distinct fields at Tillingham in 1840. When I got here there were five. Now we're getting back to the 16 fields. We've got 50 employees. We've put orchards back in. We've got vines. We've got livestock. We're reinstating windbreaks and hedges and creating that biodiversity. It feels like we're doing the right thing.
How did you get from growing up on a farm to Classics?
I didn't know what to do, and there was something about Classics that took my eye. I won a scholarship during my A-levels to go on an archaeological dig, which I really loved, and that interest led me to Classics, which allowed me to do archaeology at university. I did my dissertation about my family farm – I tracked its decline, basically, through records and archaeology.
Your interest in how things used to be done seems to fit with everything you do. The winemaking process you're using is centuries old…
It is. Most other winemakers study chemistry and wine science, so winemaking becomes all about complicated machinery and interventions. I make wine in a way that's thousands of years old. It's informed by winemaking science – I understand it; I went back to university to study winemaking. But the science is only in the background, in case anything goes wrong. It informs what we do, but we don't apply winemaking chemistry in a practical sense in a laboratory.
A renovated staircase in the repurposed farm building
Do you see winemaking as an art rather than a science?
I think "craft" describes it quite well. I don't think of myself as an artist. I feel much more like a farmer, and I'm turning my hand at taking the raw things we grow and transforming them. In a lot of cultures, this tradition of fermentation as a way of preserving something is very common. That's all wine is, really.
Natural wine has become more popular in the mainstream recently. Why do you think that is?
It's a hip thing now. I think it represents a growing environmental consciousness. Natural wine, if you want to define it, should really only come from grapes that are grown organically, biodynamically, naturally – no herbicides, no fungicides or pesticides that have any toxicity. And I think it's anti-establishment in a way. It's not made by "the man". A lot of people buy into the fashion of natural wine without knowing about wine. And that's OK. Conventional wine drinkers tend to be quite intimidating, there's a lot of snobbery. Natural wine is way more accessible.
How has the movement affected you?
I struggle with it. Tillingham's success is based on how hip and hot natural wine is. Our wine had a really rapid uptake across natural wine bars in London. And as that movement has popped up in cities all over the UK, we can't make enough of the stuff. We're always sold out of everything we make. Which is great! But some natural wine is faulty, or just not very well made, and I don't want to be held back by association.
Tillingham's 2021 Pet Nat rosé
Tillingham is a bigger project than just natural wine – it's about regenerating the land, the farming…
It is. I've never really paid it much thought. Everything's happened more organically, more naturally, based on my read on things. I'm thinking about how we promote certain parts of the business – the hotel, the restaurant – at the same time as not wanting it to appear as though they are more important than other parts. Customers who care more about the farming, or the winemaking, might become disenfranchised if we keep pushing Tillingham as a lifestyle destination.
How do you make sure it all works together?
I'm not sure! We're still learning. Just keep doing what we're doing, I suppose. Less is more. Always less is more.
Photography: Ollie Tomlinson
tillingham.com
