About us

Westwell is located just beneath the Pilgrims Way on the North Downs in Kent; a route used for centuries by Pilgrims travelling to Canterbury. The estate boasts an ideal mix of climate, aspect and soil and grows four different varieties - Pinot Meunier, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Ortega. All the wines are made on-site from estate grown fruit. 

The Westwell philosophy is simple: plant well, respect the soil and make great, honest wines from brilliant fruit. The team loves to experiment - from skin contact to dessert wines, wild ferments, amphora, pet nats and more - continuing to minimise intervention at every step.

Westwell think not just in terms of the next few vintages but the next generations. In the vineyard, the goal is to grow the best grapes possible while protecting and strengthening the soil, combining organic, sustainable and conventional practices, minimising intervention, conserving the vineyard and surrounding environment and promoting biodiversity.

We're proud to partner with Westwell ! Try their wines - they're delicious. You can order them and discover more on their website and Instagram.

• Low intervention
• Imperfection, irregularity and roughness are ok; the beauty is in the intention and the care. Let nature dictate.
• We remind ourselves of the virtues of patience – we intend to learn for a long time.
• We are not guided by the frenetic search for more – products will exist if / when they are ready (there is no pressure to launch 6 new ones each year)
• We just seek to enjoy today with a long attention span and find joy in missing out

Independence

• We are privately owned and independence allows us to do things that don’t make sense
• There is no destination mapped out by quantitative considerations (scale, revenue) that would require us to invent marketing moments or manufacture artificial consistency
• We do not compete: there is no such thing as superiority; just like it would be ridiculous to wonder which is the best colour in the world
• We hold ourselves to B Corp standards

And if all else fails, there’s always wine…

Sustainability

Our skincare line has been formulated, trialled and manufactured in the same lab/production centre, located only about twenty minutes away from Westwell Wines, the vineyard that provides us with the waste material our grape extracts come from.

As a result, we are lucky to have easy access to both of them, knowing exactly what goes into the products and how the magic happens. We literally see the process all the way through from seed (vine) to bottled product!

We believe in making products in small batches using only the best ingredients to assure quality and performance. The production and formulation of the products has taken over a year to perfect but we know that we have now done everything we can to create the very best and more effective formulations. As well as the formulation and production of the products we put another entire year into development and research to look into the scientific evidence there is for each active ingredient we use and the best way of combining it to achieve maximum potency.

In our lab we kept the first test extract samples in a temperature-controlled space for three months before combining them with a range of different, active and also carrier oils to then test the effectiveness on tackling problems with the skin. We never test on animals, only ourselves (and friends and family!). We’ll be writing a more in-depth article soon about the process of our extractions and some of the issues we ran into along the way - we want to be as transparent as possible to show the constant journey of learning and development that we are on.

By having our lab so close to the vineyard means that we can limit our carbon footprint in the production of our skincare products and have direct traceability from seed to bottle. As time goes on we want to source all of our ingredients, first from the UK, and eventually from a similar distance to the vineyard.

Our ingredients are sourced ethically and responsibly with each supplier being assessed to make sure they look after their supply chain so that by the time the ingredient makes its way into our products, it has made a more positive impact on the world.

Where possible, we try to use organic oils and extracts or soil association approved ingredients. Our formulations have been made with extracts from by-products (grape skins, seeds and vines) of the wine-making process. The extracts suspend the vital Poly-Phenols, such as Resveratrol, ready to enrich the skins and boost its natural ability to restore and rejuvenate. 

Alongside our Grape extracts we use a variety of ingredients that boost the capabilities of the extracts to make our products potent formulations that act quickly to do you good. We have tried to limit these ingredients as much as possible to those we can source from the UK only. Our aim by 2025 is to source all of our ingredients from UK farms, to support the local economy whilst reducing Pelegrims' carbon footprint. 

We use natural oils, powders and extracts as much as we can however we believe a blend of the natural and engineered creates the perfect and most effective formulation. We do not use any nasty compounds and try to limit allergens whenever possible. You will not find any bulking agents; instead we make concentrated formulas that work quickly for
specific intentions. 

None of our products are tested on animals - instead we test them on ourselves and on our families. Once finished we send each formulation to a lab in Oxford so that they can be safety assessed and tested for stability.

The end result is a range of products with a heavy emphasis on being scientifically enriched whilst still made ethically and in small batches.