Pelegrims, the unofficial partner of English Wine Week

English Wine Week is upon us, and by the solstice days with the mid-summer heat that we have become accustomed to in recent years—leading to Pommery, Frexinet and Taittinger planting roots in the budding market—plantings across the country are now stout with blooms.

Whilst a long winter gave the vines time to rest before a flurry of activity, Pelegrims remained abundant in action.

“This is the nicest weather we’ve had here in weeks”, muses their founder, Jerome, as he pulls out his phone to snap a shot of the lazy winter sun reaching through the bare stems, “I walked the dog in daylight this morning, for the first time in ages.”

It’s January 28th, and despite Storm Chandra having flogged the country overnight, the Westwell vines nestled just beneath the hills of the North Downs in Kent, remained oblivious.

“You’d have passed Domaine Evremond and Chartham to get here; there are over 1030 vineyards in the UK, around 120 in Kent alone, but it makes up around 25% of English plantings.”

As we chat, we walk to the northern-most edge of the vineyard, overlooking the entire estate. Pausing at a picnic bench, Jerome pulls out a pair of glasses to accompany the bottle of Ortega he has been carrying, the by-products of which are found in their skincare. From the post-pressing grape skins and seeds, and even sap from the vines, each extract contains polyphenols, including resveratrol, an anti-inflammatory highflier, the unsung (and so often discarded) hero of the wine-making process.

Indeed, as sustainability and organic methods are paramount to Westwell, this trickles down to each green Pelegrim bottle, which is further protected by their hyper-local supply chain. With their labs just 20 miles from the vineyard, they still create each product by hand, in small batches.

We sit for a moment, taking in the view and enjoying the sunshine, and despite the season's lingering grasp, it’s mild enough after our walk to sit in just t-shirts as we sip. It’s a very serene moment, with kites mewing overhead and pheasants rustling through the undergrowth. “You should take some ambient recordings to play during the Rituals,” I suggest.

Found in their flagship store in Canterbury, which opened in summer 2025, the Pelegrims' in-house treatment menu, or Rituals, is a tapestry of modern, proactive techniques perfectly entwined with their polyphenol-charged skincare elements. Co-created by advanced facialist and aesthetician Jojo Pepper and Lottie Rowlatt, they are more than just a showcase of what the brand has built; they redefine what a natural skincare brand can deliver—both to the physical bottle and the metaphorical table.

“Jojo is amazing. Did she tell you her client list over the years? She's worked with Nicole Kidman, Anne Hathaway, Anna Wintour, and even Nelson Mandela”, Jerome exclaims.

Her decades of experience in the field of aesthetics and dedication to holistic wellness make for a perfect union with the brand. The British Vinotherapy Facial combines advanced non-invasive methods such as microcurrent, LED, and oxygen infusion, alongside breathwork, fascia and lymphatic massage techniques, and skin scraping. Their body rituals, like the Winemakers Rest, expand to exfoliation and nourishing wraps, with bespoke massage, all paired with the Pelegrims line-up.

Their celebrated 2021 launch focused on a trio of hand products: Hand Cleanser, Hand & Body Cream, and Hand Pomade. Each housing Pelegrims’ inimitable herbal, earthy scent, they were best known for their habit of wandering from the washrooms of Michelin-starred restaurants, like The Sportsman in Kent, and Evelyn’s Table and Pied à Terre in London. Since, their expansion has organically encapsulated each aspect of wellness rituals at home, from their facial skincare, including the Vitamin Boost Facial Cleanser in 2022, to the home, with the tomato, fig and black pepper reed diffuser in 2023.

With each new development, their products celebrate the ingredients not only for their power, but for their provenance. Working on considered partnerships, 2023 saw the inaugural blends for South Lodge Hotel in Sussex, with ingredients sourced from Pinot Noir vines at the Ridgeway estate, one of just three British hotels with active vines on site.

“We created bespoke products for their spa,” Jerome explains, “but this led to expanding our retail range, as so many customers wanted to purchase the products used during their treatment.”

More recently, notable skincare additions include their Firming Lip Balm, the Mineral Mud Mask, and the deeply hydrating bio-cellulose Grape Leaf Sheet Mask, making them a cult name on the Winnebagos of TV and film sets.

​“A makeup artist who lives locally used our products on a big production a little while back,” Jerone divulges. “The lead actor was so taken with the products that he still requests them in her kit now, and orders them for home, but requests postage under a pseudonym. At least I hope it’s actually him, who knows...”

​It’s my third time meeting Jerome, in just over twice as many years, and his dry sense of humour never fails to tickle me.

​Our first meeting was when they were disrupting the washrooms of Michelin-star restaurants with their hand wash, ripping off the muselet and unabashedly shaking up an industry that had relied on the same luxury brands at the taps for decades. An invite to their launch brought a gorgeous evening with Chef Sven Hansen, who at the time held an enviable cellar at his Oxeye restaurant in London, featuring one of the largest collections of English, Welsh, and Irish wines, with over 200–300 labels awaiting dedicated oenophiles.

​Our second was over a private dinner in Soho, as we chitchatted about a very big year for them. An investor round enabled expansion for, amongst others, their Rewards of Patience Facial Serum Concentrate, where the aforementioned sap, rich in vitamin C, can be harvested for only a few hours each year after pruning the vines initiates a gentle letting.

​“Each year, we await a call from the vineyard to head over that same day. We place bottes over the weeping stems to collect the sap before they heal over.” Jerome recalls, “The first year, half of them blew off overnight; it was a learning curve for sure!”

​Despite funding rounds, overall, they have no desire to lose their autonomy, as he explains, “I hear from the big multinational conglomerates in beauty every year or so about investments, which is flattering, but we want our independence. I do not want our creativity to be stifled in any way.”

​At the close of 2025, the Etna Sicily limited collection was introduced, produced in collaboration with the Profumo di Vulcano vineyard, directed by Federico Graziani. Later, an evergreen line was established in early 2026. The vines, native to the locality, average a century in age and predate the phylloxera plague, which destroyed two-thirds of Europe’s vineyards in the nineteenth century.

​We discuss the logistics of obtaining by-products from Sicily and, also, from a potential future project in the Andes of South America.

“The previous owner of the Etna vines came storming into their local pub, exasperated and appealing for help with the vines, wanting to rip them up. The present owner, who was sitting at the time, just taking a drink, jumped at the chance to take over the land and set about restoring it,” Jerome tells me. “We can’t be sure of their age exactly, as there is little paperwork, but we know they are over 100 years old, and there are other documented 130-year-old plantings in the area. We now work with the owner to create our Sicily collection, and will be using the same byproducts to create our centenary range this year.”

​This year has seen the launch of their second fragrance, Persoctreow, a bright scent with notes of English peach and apple, fig leaves and cut grass, with a lactonic suggestion of fresh cream. A facial moisturising lotion and a new SPF are also on the cards, but for the summer, it’s about developing the Pelegrims experience up close.

​“We want to do treatments in the open air between the vines in the summer,” Jerome enthuses. “I don’t think anywhere else in Europe offers it, but more than that, I just think it would be so wonderfully relaxing.” Indeed, keep an eye on their Instagram for the imminent release of dates.

​Overall, it’s an enduring adoration we hold for a brand so deeply connected to the origins of our skincare and the ritual of its use. We implore you to slow down, smell the leaves, taste the grapes, and consider the same.