Multi-award winning Artelium is a wine estate based in East and West Sussex with two vineyards, one on clay soils and the other on pure chalk. Founded by Julie Bretland and Mark Collins, they began the project in 2014, planting the vineyards four years later and there are now around 27 hectares of vines. In 2022, they moved into their own winery and throughout their journey have been working with José Quintana, head winemaker at London urban winery, Vagabond.
Vagabond Wines is an independent wine bar and urban winery business founded in 2010. In December 2025, it opened the doors to its impressive, modern 6,000ft2 facility at Canada Water, London's largest urban winery, where they make English wine on site from grapes sourced from within two hours of the capital.
With eleven locations around London and one in Birmingham, Vagabond offers over 100 wines by the glass from self-service machines. The new Canada Water site will now see the company's English wine production quadruple, with visitors able to sample new releases, poured fresh from tank or barrel.
Artelium's latest wine is the Artelium x Vagabond Nature Series Cuvée 2019, the third iteration of the cuvée. It's a limited release of 1,500 bottles and a collaboration between the two wineries and Kent-born artist, Sam Hodge.
José Quintana (l) and Mark Collins (r)
For Quintana, collaborations are an integral part of Vagabond's vision. "We collaborate with loads of different partners to create wines and to create stories. Every grower that we work with has a different connection to their land and it's about eking out that story through the prism of wine. Then with the art, what we wanted to do was showcase that connection to nature."
While Quintana was involved in the dosage trials for this project, he is looking forward to helping out on other aspects in the future, such as assemblage (blending of different base wines according to grape varieties, vineyard plots or vintages). However, Artelium's own winemaker is South African, Solly Monyamane, who honed his skills in Stellenbosch and has been at the English winery for nearly four years.
Artist Sam Hodge
The bottles have been created with a triptych of tactile wine labels designed by artist, Sam Hodge, using pigments from natural materials found in the vineyard. "Some of the vine twigs are burnt to make into charcoal, which is actually a traditional pigment used back in the day", she explains. "Then I grind that up into a powder, which is basically a pigment … and here, all the black [colouring] is made with the vine twigs. Also, I collected earth and clay from one vineyard and it came in different colours … and some of the top soil as well. Then there's some chalk, which I found from where a tree had fallen down and I also used oak bark. That brown colour is oak bark, which I boiled to a pinky brown … and there's nettle as well for some of the green."
"I then encourage them to make patterns", she continues, "through flow, pressure and the release of pressure, squashing and pulling apart paint and then sprinkling the pigment on top."
She insists that the branching patterns she creates are purely accidental. Yet, they are all part of this process of letting the materials naturally create designs that reflect important elements of the landscape where the vines grow, as well as both the precision and sometimes impromptu journey of winemaking. "I was thinking of the tree roots where I had seen a tree that had fallen over", she says. "It had lumps of chalk, roots and bits of earth, so I was thinking about that when I placed these together", she explains, pointing to some of the patterns she created.
Artelium x Vagabond Nature Series triptych of tactile wine label designs
"It's a perfect artistic metaphor for what we all talk about - wine being a sense of place", says Quintana. By bringing nature into the label artwork in this manner, Artelium, Vagabond and Sam Hodge are representing the three things needed for a vine to grow - water, soil and light - as well as the three parts of the collaboration.
"It's always been a view for us to make wines which tell a story about the terroir", says Collins. "We think storytelling about wine is the most important thing. Therefore, having a real provenance to the wine, to the stories behind those wines, is so important. The collaboration is all about celebrating wine, nature and art."
Made exclusively from first pressings, each variety was fermented separately in stainless steel tanks with partial malolactic conversion, before the wine spent five years ageing on its lees.
🍇 Grapes: 49% Pinot Noir, 34% Chardonnay, 17% Meunier.
🍬 Dosage: 2g/L.
🎚️ ABV: 12%.
😋 Tasting notes: Trademark English bright acidity with lemon and green apple zestiness, some fleshy stone fruit and lemon curd notes adding juiciness and texture plus a lick of toasted brioche that lingers on the finish.
Vagabond Urban Winery's modern Canada Water site offering wines by the glass, tours and tastings
You can buy this release (RRP £45) and other Artelium wines from their webshop, cellar door or at Vagabond Wine Bars. Among their other offerings is the superlative still Pinot Gris 2023 (RRP £25), that stylistically sits somewhere between Alsace and Alto Adige. Crisp and delicious with a juicy, fleshy pear and tropical fruit character plus a subtle creamy texture, this was awarded 92 Points by Wine Enthusiast. It's well worth seeking out, as well as the new Nature Series Cuvée!
