Welcome to The Heretics (www.wearetheheretics.com), a new English wine brand founded in 2022 by Gareth Maxwell aka ‘Chief Hustler’, who has a long history in the wine trade (Hattingley Valley, Ellis Wines, Wine GB), and Creative Director Jimmy Hunter. Aiming to champion English wine, The Heretics wines are all about quality, style and passion, but with a more creative, design-led approach to other traditional English wine brands.
With quality at the forefront, The Heretics first grapes, used for its first vintages, have come from Essex, specifically the Crouch Valley, which is being heralded as the future for English still wine, with ripeness levels higher than any other county in the UK. The Heretics will always work with the best growers and their focus will never stray from the top end of the quality spectrum.
Design is really important to The Heretics, therefore they didn’t want to churn out the same thing vintage after vintage. Every vintage will see a completely different set of labels and probably names of the wines too, always sticking to its conversation starting colour scheme of black, white and yellow. Supporting young creatives of the world, The Heretics will appoint a new young illustrator, photographer or designer for every vintage, with the labelling of The Heretics first wines, showcasing images from 22-year-old Louix Hunter, a photographer who describes his work as ‘images that tell stories’.
The Heretics first release – Blowhorn Rosé
Ready in time for National Rosé Day (8th June) and English Wine Week (15th – 23rd June), The Heretics has proudly bottled its first release for sale this May, a 2023 vintage Blowhorn Rosé (£29 per bottle). The Blowhorn Rosé, is the UK’s first 100% barrel fermented rosé, in Burgundy barrels, and is made from 100% Pinot Noir grapes, grown in heavy London clay soil in the Crouch Valley in Essex. Pale and delicate in colour, and extremely drinkable, this is a serious rosé, and the wine has more depth and complexity than other rosé wines.
Best served at 11 degrees, on the nose, the wine is layered and complex, with notes of wild strawberry, subtle cedarwood and Seville Orange zest. The rosé is full on the palate, with structure and mouthfeel coming from the neutral use of oak, wrapped around an acid core adding focus and length on the finish. The wine is strategically bottled in a black bottle to protect it from light strike from sunlight and UV and is sealed with Diam technical corks – removing the chance of ‘cork taint’ (being corked)- to guarantee a premium wine in every bottle.
The 2023 season started as very promising, with a frost-free spring and excellent weather through the key flowering period in late June. The weather turned cooler and wetter as summer progressed, however a heat spike in mid- September kicked on ripening leading to the biggest and one of the lowest acid harvests of the last 20 years.
The Blowhorn Rosé is whole bunch harvested, gently destemmed with no crushing, and held on skins for four hours before gentle pressing, settling, and racking to 3rd, 4th and 5th fill Burgundy barrels. It is fermented in small batches using a variety of yeast strains to add complexity. It then goes through periodic lees stirring to build texture on a barrel-by-barrel basis, with the wine spending a total of five months in barrel.
The Blowhorn Rosé is named simply after the Blowhorn named truck featured on the label, taken from the back of a TukTuk in Jaipur in Rajastahn, photographed by Creative Director Jimmy’s son, 22-year-old Louix Hunter.
A sophisticated rosé, the Blowhorn Rosé can be drunk alone, is perfect with food and for the BBQ season and with branding this good it makes the perfect gift or conversation starter at a dinner party. Classy, refined and elegant in style, simply put, it pairs well with sunshine, good music, a hammock and no plans!
With a love for music and festivals on the label of every bottle of The Heretics premium English wine, drinkers will find a QR code, linking to The Heretics playlist, curated to deliver the perfect ambiance to enjoy a quality glass or bottle.
Gareth Maxwell, chief hustler comments on the launch of The Heretics, said: “We wanted to do something that English wine (or really, any wine) wasn’t. The labels being created by new, young creative talent and the links to music and fashion weren’t anything that we’d seen from anyone else. It’s all things that we love, and we thought that coupling that with our love of wine would appeal to the like-minded. We also wanted to do it all by ourselves, we don’t have big budgets, nor do we have anyone looking over our shoulder though, diluting what we do. That’s the way we like it and that’s the way it’s going to stay.”
Jimmy Hunter, creative director adds, “The yellow spray paint was designed to be provocative. I’ve always loved graffiti, and bringing that in with the bright yellow, we felt, gave it a huge standout. It also allowed us to use it to spray over traditional vineyard images. It was all about creating branding that looked cool, that would be noticed and, perhaps, more importantly, that would be the opposite of what everyone else is doing. We are heretics after all.”
The Blowhorn Rosé is available to pre-order now, direct from https://www.wearetheheretics.com/product/blowhorn-rose/. Sign up to the newsletter to be the first to hear about new vintage releases later this year, including The Heretics Chardonnay (Autumn 2024) and The Cut (2025), dubbed to be ‘something different’.
