The Blackbook Story

Blackbook was born of a love of three things: cool climate pinot noir and chardonnay; the English wine industry; and this fair city we call home, London.  We are an urban winery located in a railway arch in Battersea, a stone's throw from Battersea Park in south London.  The grapes are sourced from growers within hours of the city, carefully selected for their well-located vineyards and high quality grapes.  Our ethos embraces a single fundamental goal: to make bloody good wine.  We endeavour to bring the hard work of our vineyard owners to the forefront by creating a range of single vineyard wines that showcase the quality and potential for making world-leading still wine here in England.  We have two focal varieties, chardonnay and pinot noir.  While we love these varieties, additional grapes are sourced annually to produce experimental releases that keep us on our toes!  Sometimes they are even added to the line up if our creations work.  

We are proud to be a London winery and a London business, and we are passionate about this city.  We seek to reflect the vibrancy, colour, culture and energy of London in our wines, how they look, feel and taste.  We work with other London businesses at every opportunity and are focused on being part of the hub of innovation in this city today and tomorrow.  

OUR FOUNDERS

Blackbook is the first solo project from winemaker, Sergio Verrillo, and his wife Lynsey.  They are both passionate Londoners and passionate oenophiles who have long held the dream of starting an urban winery in London which can stand alongside many of the great wineries around the globe.

Sergio grew up in the US, a son of Italian and Hungarian immigrants surrounded by wine lovers who would vinify their own blends in the back garden and drink wine with breakfast.  His wine career took off at pace when he moved to London in the noughties, and joined the Michelin world as a sommelier (Maze, Tamarind & Chez Bruce).  Quickly realising that this was the industry for him, but his desire was to be in production rather than sales, he enrolled at Plumpton College in East Sussex where he earned a degree in Viticulture and Oenology in 2014.  He spent the next few years as a travelling winemaker, seeking to learn and experience harvest in many of the great wine producing regions with a focus on cool climate pinot noir & chardonnay.  Sergio’s journey took him from England (Greyfriars) to California (Flowers/Calera) to Burgundy (De Montille) to Stellenbosch (Mulderbosch) and then finally to New Zealand (Ata Rangi) before he stuck his passport in the drawer.  Sergio is a winemaker who has a great appreciation for the classic production methods and the breadth of experience to innovate in order to ensure each wine produced is unique, distinct and creating a phenomenal representation of the carefully selected fruit.

Lynsey has spent her professional career working across consultancy, travel and payments sectors, with a commercial focus: developing customer strategies, business development and proposition development within leading UK & global brands. Her career in wine started when her Sergio began constructing plans for an urban winery near their home in London. Lynsey became unexpectedly and quickly immersed in the business, fortuitously coinciding with a maternity leave so they could truly get the brand off the ground together. Lynsey leads most of the Blackbook activities outside of the winery including marketing, planning and finances, she has actively embraced the family business, and spends much of harvest time in the winery, helping to shovel grapes, punch down a tank of pinot or rinse out a barrel. She is a member of the WineGB South East committee, and is the chair of WineGB’s Diversity & Inclusion working group.

Sergio and Lynsey are also parents to two small children and can often be spotted around Brixton with a strong coffee in hand en route to Brockwell Park.

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