In 2010, our family was on holiday in Thailand when the Icelandic volcano erupted. The ash cloud shut European airspace for weeks. Our flight home was cancelled. When we asked to be rescheduled, the answer wasn’t next week. It was nine to ten weeks.

Our girls were all under ten. We’d already been away three weeks. Ben and I both had jobs. And there were no flights.

I asked what felt like a fairly obvious question at the time: the ash cloud is only over Europe, so what if we fly the other way? They said yes. Nobody had mentioned that option before, but yes.

So we went east. Thailand to Singapore to Perth.

We were supposed to stay three days. We stayed three weeks. We drove the Margaret River Valley and visited every vineyard we could find. One afternoon I was sipping a glass of sparkling wine, Ben had a Pinot Noir, and our girls were running between the rows of vines without a care in the world. Ben turned to me and said we could do this.

I said yes.

We found our land in Sussex within two weeks of getting home.

Ten years since the first planting

We put our first vines in the ground in 2016. This year we’re marking a decade since that first planting. Looking back at two people who knew almost nothing about viticulture, and comparing them to who we are now, is a strange and satisfying thing to do.

I’ve lit hundreds of wax candles in frozen fields at three in the morning to protect the buds from frost. I’ve stood in April and stared across a vineyard gone so electric green that you can’t quite believe what you’re looking at. Our General Manager Luke has taught me more about soil biology, cover cropping, and why bats are some of our most useful workers than I ever expected to learn. Our eldest Georgia quietly took over our social media and does a far better job of it than I would.

And we’ve waited. A lot. Sparkling wine, done right, takes time. From vine to glass is seven years. Patience isn’t a virtue in this business. It’s just the job.

Why Everflyht, why Sussex

We always wanted the brand to feel rooted here, in Sussex specifically rather than some vague English countryside. The six V shapes in our logo represent the six Martlets on the Sussex flag. The Martlets were said to be so quick and restless that they were never drawn with feet, always moving, always in flight. Ever-flight. Everflyht.

That felt right to me. We hadn’t planned any of this. I asked if we could fly the wrong way around the world and we ended up exactly where we were meant to be. There’s something in that. Something about always moving, never quite landing, and finding something beautiful in that.

Come and see us

If you’ve been curious about English sparkling wine, or you simply want to see what a regenerative Sussex vineyard looks like up close, we’d love to have you. The tasting room is open, and our newest wine, Wylde, is now available. Come find out where it all started.

This post draws on an interview with Sam and Ben Ellis originally published by Babble Hove in March 2026.