Copy of Who we are

Mark split his time growing up between London and the farm at Preston Candover, and wine was part of his career long before the family planted a vineyard. He spent 25 years at the forefront of London's hospitality scene. He co-founded Moro, the celebrated Exmouth Market restaurant, alongside chefs Sam and Sam Clark in 1997. He went on to open the Zetter Hotel in Clerkenwell in 2004, followed by the Zetter Townhouse, Bistrot Bruno Loubet, and the Grain Store in King's Cross.  In 2008, alongside Henry Dimbleby (co-founder of Leon), Simon Heppner and Giles Gibbons, he co-founded the Sustainable Restaurant Association which created a global framework for sustainability in hospitality. Today, the SRA’s Food Made Good Standard guides the practice of over 15,000 food businesses worldwide. Sustainability, in other words, has long been a professional calling as much as a personal one.  Mark still recalls the moment he first tasted English sparkling wine, when a glass was handed to him at an event in 2010: it stopped him in his tracks. It’s no surprise, therefore, that he leapt at the chance to work alongside his father and brother Julian to plant the vineyard at Candover Brook in 2012.  Today, Mark runs the farm and vineyard alongside Julian, according to regenerative principles, and through his charitable trust – the Mark Leonard Trust, established in 1994 – he works with the JJ Charitable Trust and the Aurora Trust as part of the Climate Change Collaboration, which he helped form in 2011. His giving focuses on sustainable farming, climate change mitigation and the restoration of natural systems. Mark is particularly passionate about the role that demonstrably healthy, profitable regenerative farms can play in shifting the wider agricultural conversation.  

Julian is Mark's brother and co-owner of Candover Brook, sharing responsibility for the estate and its direction. His approach has been shaped by a long commitment to systemic change – asking not just what we farm, but why and how our economic and cultural assumptions about land, food and growth need to shift. Where Mark's background lies in hospitality, Julian's is in the art world as sculptor and potter, having founded John Julian, a pottery studio in Wiltshire in 2000.

In 1992, Julian founded the JJ Charitable Trust, which works with organisations tackling deep-rooted systems in education, economics and culture, with the aim of catalysing a fundamental shift towards a truly sustainable future. The Trust supports social and community experimentation around regenerative and circular economies, and is a founding partner in the Climate Change Collaboration – a partnership between the JJ Charitable Trust, the Mark Leonard Trust (Mark's trust) and the Aurora Trust, formed in 2011 with a mission to keep global warming within 1.5°C, restore the natural world and support a regenerative economy.

For Julian and Mark, Candover Brook is not a lifestyle venture, but - along with the farm - a living, breathing example of values they have spent decades championing.  The vineyard and the farms that surround it are a tangible expression of the future they have been campaigning for.

Lady Anya Sainsbury is the widow of Lord John Sainsbury and the mother of Mark, Julian and Sarah. Born Ann Eltenton in Manchester in 1933, she spent her early years in Leningrad – where her physicist father worked and where Russian neighbours gave her the name Anya – before the family moved to California during the Second World War. She returned to England in 1947 and auditioned for the Sadler's Wells Ballet School, which accepted her.She joined the Sadler's Wells Ballet (which became the Royal Ballet in 1956) in 1951, dancing under the stage name Anya Linden. Progressing from corps de ballet to soloist in 1954, she was awarded the formal title of ballerina in 1958 following her acclaimed performance as Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. During her career she danced all the great classical roles – Swan Lake, Giselle, Coppélia, The Firebird, Cinderella – and worked with some of the defining choreographers of the era, including Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan and John Cranko. She retired from the stage in 1965.

In 1963 she married Sir John Sainsbury, later Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover, with whom she founded the Linbury Trust – its name a combination of theirs – which has awarded over £200 million in grants across the arts, education, social welfare and the environment. Lady Sainsbury was appointed CBE for her services to arts education and ballet, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Winchester in 2012.

She continues to be closely associated with the Royal Ballet School and Rambert School, both of which she has supported for decades.  At Candover Brook, she is part of the life of the estate: the house is opened for dinners, farm visits and community gatherings that she hosts alongside Mark and Julian.

Samuel grew up in Montpellier in the south of France, surrounded by vineyards, their rhythm embedded in his life from an early age. After studying agronomy, viticulture and oenology in the south of France, he went to work as a cellar hand and tractor driver in Pic Saint-Loup for a season, before advancing to winemaker and vineyard manager in a 70ha organic vineyard, also in Languedoc, developing a deep interest in organic viticulture.  He subsequently managing the vineyard and winemaking for an estate in Bordeaux, before his curiosity led him somewhere considerably less predictable: the chalk hills of Hampshire.

He joined the Candover Brook team in 2018 and has been integral to the vineyard’s shift to regenerative practices. With Mark and Julian’s support, he is constantly experimenting in the vineyard – trialling new methods to both increase quality and make our farming even more sustainable. From overseeing the shift away from compound fertilisers and the move to composting, tests with sheep’s fleeces and Johnson-Su, as well as a more efficient sprayer, Sam is our literal man on the ground, walking the vines and ensuring we produce the finest – and healthiest – fruit possible.

Precise and pragmatic, his passion for our site – and the wines it produces – shines through in every conversation. His influence goes far beyond the vineyard, too, following the fruit through to the winery, where he is one of the select few to decide on Candover Brook’s final blends.

Sam also manages the vines at neighbouring vineyard, The Grange, in Alresford (where our wines are also vinified).