Our Story

Only the finest fizz:
Driven by family, innovation and the pursuit of excellence.

Our story starts with family. When you make a wine with passion, you can taste it. Our family at Bluestone Vineyards have given us the freedom to pursue the finest fizz with a true passion for learning, for innovation, and for quality. The family we have is our brothers, our sisters, parents, relatives, friends and community. This is Bluestone’s secret ingredient.

The 42 acre Cholderton family farm, home to rare breeds with roaming peacocks and alpaca tours, welcomes over 30,000 visitors per year. For generations, the family have focused on providing quality family time in the Wiltshire countryside. Bluestone Vineyards has been born from this tradition, and our sparkling wines strive to create similar memorable experiences for all those who drink it, whether with us amongst the vines at our tasting table or with your fellow loved ones at home.

History and winemaking

The name of our vineyard is taken from the Stonehenge World Heritage site a few minutes from our estate. You can find the unique bluestones at Stonehenge, and the name is a reminder of the history we inherited with our land. Proprietors and brothers Nat and Toby McConnell planted 10 acres of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier on the family farm in 2016, and the first wines produced from estate fruit were released in the 2019 vintage Cuvees. You can read more about our vineyard here.

Since planting our vines, the brothers have teamed up with Chef de Cave Hervé Jestin at Hambledon, England’s oldest commercial vineyard, to make the wine. Nat and Toby release a very limited run of their exclusive Cuvees each year, so working with a state of the art facility like Hambledon was an important step in our pursuit for excellence. The grapes are pressed as gently as possible using the top of the range Coquard PAI presses, preserving the purity of the fruit flavour and capturing the essence of the fruit and its terroir.

Each Cuvee is blended by the brothers in collaboration with Hervé and rested for a period on lees and under cork following disgorgement, only to be released when the wine is ready and at its finest.

Always striving

At the core of everything we do at Bluestone is a thirst for learning. We aspire to make every Cuvee release the best one yet. From the intimate knowledge of every parcel of our vines to state of the art winemaking, from blending the base wines into each vintage’s story to choosing the ideal release time. All we do is strive for excellence, so that when you pop the cork of a Bluestone sparkling wine, you only need savour it.

Try our range of exclusive Cuvees here.