Close Menu
News

Acclaimed British artist conjures up new labels for Balfour wines

Kent winery Balfour has enlisted artist Henry Hudson to design three works of arts around its Hush Heath estate, which will feature on the producer’s 2022 Winemaker Collection.

Balfour has struck up a reputation for the avant-garde nature of its limited edition wines, and its forthcoming 2022 Winemaker Collection is no exception. The producer is poised to release three still wines, a red, a white and a rosé on 23 April, that have been aged in different woods and in different ways.

Bottles are adorned with labels that have been designed by contemporary multi-media artist Henry Hudson, with the aim of the wines becoming collectors’ items. Best known for his work spanning painting, sculpture, ceramics, installation and print-making, Hudson has also ventured into digital art, and used an iPad to depict the Hush Heath Manor gatehouse on the new wine labels.

The East London-based artist has portrayed the property, which sits on Balfour’s 161-hectare Tudor estate, on a range of different coloured backgrounds from blossom-pink to jet black. His interest in historical residences may well have been inherited from his grandmother, a Bletchley House code-breaker, who also made intricate scale model houses of Georgian buildings, which took up to two years to complete.

Among other mediums, Hudson has worked broadly with plasticine. “I started adding paraffin wax to make it more elastic, which allows me to use brushes and make the work a lot freer. I’ve taken from buying it in packets to having machines and making my own colours. I run an old type Renaissance studio, and I make colours there,” he told Culture Trip.

Image @henryhudson_bk

Balfour is one of England’s leading producers and makes 400,000 bottles of still and sparkling wines each year. More than half of the estate’s some 80 hectares under vine are planted on Wealdon clay soils.

Among the new Winemaker Collection is a blend of five white varieties including Champagne, Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Arbanne and Petite Meslier, which was aged for nine months in French Fontainebleau barrels with prolonged lees ageing in tank and barrel.

An intriguing rosé is the result of an English Pinot Noir fermented with a yeast from Rioja and then aged in barriques from France and America. The new red wine in the collection is thought to be Balfour’s most concentrated and powerful Pinot Noir yet and comes from a single parcel within a single vineyard from selected Dijon clones.

The 2022 Winemaker Collection goes on sale via balfourwinery.com and the Balfour Winery visitor shop  from 23 April.

It looks like you're in Asia, would you like to be redirected to the Drinks Business Asia edition?

Yes, take me to the Asia edition No