With one store in Hassocks and the other in Lindfield, South Downs Cellars has become known as an expert in Sussex wine. We catch up with founder Lucy Driver on how she built that reputation.

When I first opened the shop 23 years ago, the main English wineries in production were Bolney, Ridgeview, Nyetimber and Camel Valley. We started off with Ridgeview because it was just around the corner from the Hurst (Hassocks) shop, and it’s just grown from there. We’ve ended up becoming a bit of a Sussex specialist, not really by choice, but because we’ve found that customers want to buy wines from where they’ve just walked their dogs at the weekend.

We’ve also had wines from Hampshire, Kent and Surrey, but they’ve been much harder to sell. That’s nothing to do with quality, it’s more about localism taken to the extreme. That said, we are trying to broaden this a bit by branching out into Kent and stocking some of the still wines coming from the Crouch Valley in Essex.

Some people might still place greater emphasis on English sparkling wine, but I think local Sussex customers are very aware of the still wines too. From a price-point perspective, we sell a lot of still wines for under £20. We’ve recently started working with Highweald Wine Estate, which produces some fantastic still wines, as well as places like Artelium Wine Estate.

We sell local spirits in the shop. If you were to look at our gin shelves, I’d say that probably 70% to 75% of bottles are from Sussex. When the gin boom was going strong in 2019, around half of our range was Sussex and the other half from the rest of the world, but it’s the local spirits that have maintained sales over national or international ones. The same applies to local beer: we have Beak literally on our doorstep, as well as Burning Sky, Unbarred and Abyss. As Intended Brewing Co has also recently launched in Brighton.

In terms of other developments, we’ve started hosting a small bar outside our Lindfield shop, which consists of just four tables and a barrel. We serve a house red and white wine, a prestige option and a mystery choice. If people can guess the vintage and the country or region, they receive a discount voucher, either to use on the next round or to take home. It’s all just a bit of fun.

We are also in the process of launching our wine school, which began with some taster sessions in May. We’re building up to our first three-week course in June, followed by a six-week course. We’ll be running this at Court Garden, a local winery roughly between the two shops. We’ve always hosted tastings, of course, but this educational side is something we’ve been asked for many times.