Artelium, England

Founded by Mark Collins and Julie Bretland in 2020, the name Artelium comes from a combination of ‘Art’ and ‘- ium’, a Latin suffix used to denote places where people congregate. In that sense, Artelium is the embodiment of a long-held vision to create a space for people to come together and enjoy wine and art in a beautiful natural setting. The area around their East Sussex home has a proud heritage of artisans, which Mark and Julie wanted to celebrate by being a hub for artistic expression and innovative winemaking. Artelium sees each vintage as an opportunity to create pioneering styles of wine that will shape the future of the industry, using both their own grapes and collaborating with other growers. Mark leads the wine team supported by Owen Elias (one of the UK’s most respected and renowned winemakers and recent addition to the team, South African Solly Monyamane.

Viticulture

The estate is split across two sites: one in East Sussex near Ditchling with 45,000 vines in clay soil and the other in Madehurst, West Sussex with 85,000 vines in chalk. It is this unique terroir of the South Downs, and the combination of clay and chalk, which provide the ideal landscape to grow the grapes that are the essence of Artelium’s wines. Growing Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Meunier and Pinot Gris alongside plantings of 17,000 innovative disease resistant PIWI varieties on south facing slopes. The hope is that they can develop unique wines from these vines which come with an added benefit of greater disease resistance, meaning less chemical intervention. They pride themselves on being custodians for the future of English wine, to develop sustainable practices and to have a responsibility of testing viticultural innovations.

Winemaking

The sparkling and still wines are produced traditionally, a secondary fermentation in bottle for the sparkling and depending on the cuvée they may use lees aging, cold settling, partial malolactic fermentation and a proportion in oak to enhance and get the very best from the wine.