About
We check it, or we don't print it.
Thatch & Trail is a guide to every vineyard in Sussex you can actually visit — and, in time, to the countryside days built around them.
Why this exists
Sussex grows more wine than anywhere else in Britain, and finding out which vineyards you can visit — and which of those will feed you, put you up, or take the dog — is unreasonably hard. The information exists, scattered across three dozen estate websites, each with a different idea of what "open" means. This site pulls it into one place and keeps it current.
How the data is gathered
Every entry starts from the estate's own published information. It's then structured into the same fields for all 37 vineyards, so they can actually be compared: tours, opening pattern, food, rooms, weddings, dogs, and the nearest station with the drive from the platform.
Where a field is unconfirmed, it says so. There are no invented opening hours here, and no guessed dog policies. If we haven't checked it, it isn't stated as fact.
How we check it
Entries are confirmed with the estate directly — we write to them, ask them to correct the record, and update the listing. Vineyards change their tasting days, their kitchens and their minds; a guide that isn't maintained is worse than no guide at all.
If you run a vineyard here and something's wrong, tell us and it gets fixed the same week. If you'd like a photograph of your estate on your listing instead of none, send one and we'll use it.
What we don't do
No estate has paid to be listed, and none can. The order isn't for sale. Where a listing links to an estate's website, it's because we've confirmed the address — twelve entries currently have no link for exactly that reason.