Sparkling English success stories

It’s no longer news that English wines are growing in stature with every passing year. Sparkling wines, especially, continue to set the pace and I was bowled over recently with the quality and consistency of the sparkling wines I tasted at the annual English Wine Producers’ event. But don’t just take my word for it - English wines have already scooped up plenty of medals at major competitions this year, with surely more to come.

Stories are circulating about a looming shortage of Prosecco, which I would take with a large pinch of salt, but if they do materialise, there is plenty of English fizz to fill the gap, with production up to 6.3 million bottles last year. And this figure will only rise, as more vineyards enter production.

Below are some old favourites and some new (to me at least) discoveries:

Hambledon Classic Cuvée NV – £29.95 from Berry Brothers

This Chardonnay dominated blend from Hampshire based Hambledon Vineyard combines complexity and linearity with delicious baked apple maturing Chardonnay character. It scooped a Gold Medal at the International Wine Challenge and that competition’s English Non Vintage trophy.

Hattingley Valley Classic Cuvée 2010 – £29.95 from slurp.co.uk and The Wine Reserve (Cobham)

Another Hampshire vineyard, and all of whose wines I rate, has done well on the medal front – this also scored Gold at the International Wine Challenge. It is 90% Chardonnay, has lovely, long-lasting flavour and is, according to my tasting note, “quite delicious”.

High Clandon The Succession Cuvée 2009 – not commercially available

This is a bittersweet success story for Surrey-based, tiny producers Bruce and Sibylla Tindale. Their 1-acre vineyard has produced a wine judged worthy of a Gold medal at the International Wine Challenge (as well as Bronze at the Decanter World Wine Awards and Gold at the Sommelier Wine Awards) – but sadly, they have none available to sell as their stock was stolen from its bonded warehouse earlier this year. You can, however, get a taste of High Clandon, as the Tindales will be launching their 2010 Magna Carta Cuvée this month.

A taste of the Surrey Hills

Time was, English (and Welsh) wine was something to try for its novelty value. You didn’t expect it to taste much like wine as you knew it – and much of the time, that expectation was fulfilled.

In recent years, however, quality levels have shot up and consistently enjoyable wines from England and Wales are no longer a novelty. In fact, at a recent event to mark the launch of the Surrey Hills Trust Fund, I was challenged to select wines only from the Surrey Hills.

Eating locally grown produce is something we are all familiar with. Is it now possible to think about drinking locally in the same way?

Winemaking in the UK has a long history, which may date back to the time of the Romans. It is tempting to imagine our Romano-British ancestors reclining on their couches and knocking back locally produced wine, as they while complain about the state of the weather, bemoan the performance of their team in the chariot racing and ask the servants to turn up the hypocaust.

Archaeological evidence certainly exists for wine drinking, in the form of amphorae and drinking cups; as well as for viticulture. However, no evidence has yet been found of actual winemaking in Roman Britain, in the form of winery equipment, presses and so on, so they may have been downing Cuvée Asterix from Gaul rather than Vin de Pays de Surrey. 

Wine was certainly made in Britain from the late Saxon period onwards, though colder periods like the Little Ice Age (from around 1350-1850) will have wiped out some, if not all vineyards. Modern English winemaking began after the Second World War and plantings really took off from the mid 1990s, when we found that sparkling wine was where our strength lay.

The Surrey Hills are home to quality-focused sparkling wine producers including Greyfriars and High Clandon.

High Clandon

Sibylla and Bruce Tindale have planted a 1-acre vineyard in Clandon, with stunning views of London up to the Wembley arch and the Shard. They look after the vines and the wine itself is made by multi award-winning winemaker Sam Linter at Bolney Estate in Sussex.

They have just released their 2009 Succession Cuvée, a blend of just over half Chardonnay, with the remainder divided between Pinots Noir and Meunier. Over four years on its lees have given finesse and elegance to the Chardonnay fruit, with a floral hint on the nose and generous apple and spice on the palate.

They also made around a third of their (admittedly small) production as Ultra Cuvée 2009, based on the same base wine and blend, but with a lower dosage at disgorgement. This makes for a drier wine, but also changes the feel of the wine in the mouth, with fine, minerally acidity and more precisely defined fruit.

Both cuvees are available for £29. To find out more and to buy the wine, go to http://www.highclandon.co.uk/.

Greyfriars Vineyard

Many of you will have driven past Greyfriars, on the Hog’s Back southwest of Guildford. For years I’ve thought what a fantastic spot this is for making wine – it has a southerly aspect and free draining chalk bedrock under a thin layer of soil. The original owners planted the first vines here in 1989, but Mike Wagstaff and his business partner took over in 2010 and have vastly expanded the plantings and are producing high quality wines which really do justice to the site.

They are shortly to release two wines:

Greyfriars Rosé Reserve 2012

A blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay which has spent nine months on its lees, retaining delicious fresh flavours of cream, blossom and peach, with a twist of pink peppercorn.

Greyfriars Blanc de Blancs 2011

A 100% Chardonnay, some of which was fermented in old oak barrels, and which has spent 21 months on its lees. I found this delightfully fresh with a hint of fresh ginger and breadiness on the nose and with a light bodied elegance.  

http://www.greyfriarsvineyard.co.uk/

Sparkling wines are definitely the stars of the English wine scene, but Surrey man (or woman) cannot live by fizz alone, and there are high quality still wines to choose from.

Albury Organic Vineyard Silent Pool Rosé 2013

Nick Wenman’s master plan is to produce a high quality organic sparkling wine from his vineyard across the A25 from Albury, just above Silent Pool.

His first vintage of sparkling wine will, he hopes, be released by the end of this year. However, in the meantime, he has made a bit of a splash with his still rosé. Serendipitously, the inaugural vintage was selected to be served on the royal barge for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, whereafter it promptly sold out. The 2013 has just been released and is available at a number of retail outlets for around £14-15. It is a blend of Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier with aromas and flavours of strawberries and cream and just a hint of fruit sweetness to balance the natural acidity.

http://www.alburyvineyard.com/

Element 20 2011

Denbies is a name familiar to most locals and is possibly the only English wine producer that most Surreyites would be able to name. They make a wide range of wines, including award-winning sparkling wines, many of which are available to buy on the High Street and in supermarkets.

Also made at Denbies, and made using at least some fruit from their vineyard, is this ambitious barrel-fermented blend of Chardonnay with a little Pinot Gris and Bacchus. A rich but dry style of wine with chalky minerality, spice and a long, elegant finish. This is an exciting wine, perhaps inspired by white Burgundy, but a uniquely English expression of the style. I love it, but am clearly not alone as it was awarded a Silver Medal in the Decanter World Wine Awards.

Available online and elsewhere for £20 a bottle: http://www.litmuswines.com/

So, can you now drink locally without sacrificing quality? I think that’s a yes.

"season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" may live up to its name

I can still see the 1970s TV advert in my mind’s eye:  dew spotted apples being harvested while the voiceover intoned “Autumn, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”.  The advert was promoting the “exceedingly good cakes” of Mr Kipling, so my adolescent brain made a connection between the line of verse and writer, poet and patriot Rudyard Kipling.  Did I also think he made cakes in his spare time?

Of course you all knew that the poem is by Keats, the opening line of his ode “To Autumn” and makes no mention of apple slices, fondant fancies or any other favourite of the cake magnate.

This year Autumn may live up to Keats’ breathless description as we are experiencing what naturalists call a “mast year”, where trees and other plants produce a bumper crop of fruit and seeds.  What exactly causes a mast year is not fully understood, but I can certainly vouch for the utterly ridiculous amount of acorns being deposited by the oak trees in our back garden; and I have already made a batch of bramble jelly and look forward to a good few blackberry and apple crumbles before the season is out.  Why, even our useless Egremont russet and pathetic pear have produced a crop this year.  Clearly something is afoot out in nature.

If you spent any time in this country in the summers of 2012 and 2011, you will appreciate that winemakers in England and Wales had a thin time of it in the past couple of years.  Cool, damp, grey summers do not make for large crops of healthy grapes.  Indeed last year Nyetimber, one of the foremost makers of English sparkling wine, decided to give up on a bad job and made no wine at all in 2012.  Growers desperately need a good year:  with the abundance of Mother Nature apparent all around us, will they get one?

 

Healthy, ripening grapes this week

Signs are good, so far.  Growers are reporting a potentially large harvest of healthy, ripe grapes.  Nick Wenman of Albury Organic Vineyard was able to show me Seyval Blanc, Pinots Noir and Meunier and Chardonnay all looking healthy and plentiful this week.  At the other end of the country, Bob Lindo of Camel Valley in Cornwall, one of the country’s largest commercial vineyards, reports a large crop of clean healthy grapes.  Sybilla Tindale of High Clandon Estate confirmed that her vineyard is full of healthy fat bunches of grapes.  All looks set for success.

 

Nick Wenman of Albury Organic Vineyard

Yet, at latitudes this far north, grapes are nowhere near fully ripe now.  We really need more warmth and sun in order to ripen the grapes and turn a potential harvest into vats of fermenting must in the winery.  Grape harvests here are likely to be towards the end of October – despite that lovely summer weather, which allowed the grapes to catch up a week or so after the setbacks of the long, cold spring and early summer, ripening is still 1-2 weeks behind schedule.  So now, as Sybilla Tindale says, the challenge will be to ripen those bunches.

"Bougies" - heaters ready in the vineyard just in case

Here are some wines to enjoy, while we wait:

Theale Vineyard Blanc de Blancs 2007 – made by Laithwaite’s, sadly not commercially available

I know, what a wind up – sorry! However, in case you should come across a bottle of this or another vintage, let nothing come between it and you.  This is a classy glass of fizz in anyone’s book.  Made from 100% Chardonnay and with plenty of textbook bottle aged character:  the nose is pure McVitie’s Digestive biscuit, with a hint of strawberry shortcake.  This leads onto a many-layered palate of appley fruit, fine and complex.   If someone gave me this and told me it was vintage Champagne, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

And what of Nick Wenman’s Albury Organic Vineyard?  The first commercial release of the estate’s sparkling wine is planned in time for Christmas 2014, so we have a while to wait to taste the fruits of his labour.  However, there should be (barring disaster in the next couple of weeks) some of his still wine, Silent Pool Rosé 2013 available from May 2014.  The entire vineyard is run organically, but Nick is also hoping to be able to produce a small proportion of biodynamic still rosé, an experiment that I would love to taste the results of.

High Clandon Queen’s Jubliee Cuvée 2008 - £29 from http://www.highclandon.co.uk

If you are big on sourcing locally then the sparkling wine from  this tiny property with just an acre of vines on a site facing north (and with fantastic views towards London), will be just up your street.  Owners Bruce and Sybilla Tindale are originally from South Africa and seemingly thought nothing of planting a vineyard in their grounds.  Their vineyard may be tiny but they’ve done things properly, studying wine-making at Plumpton College – and getting award-winning English winemaker Sam Linter (of Bolney Estate in Sussex) to make their wine.

The wine is a blend of the traditional three varieties used in Champagne:  Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier.  The 2008, their first commercial release, spent nearly four years on the lees (ie ageing in the cellar post-fermentation), which is a key quality element for any traditional method sparkling wine.  The north-east facing site ensures marked citrus acidity in the wine, along with great length and persistence of flavour.

Sybilla is not a fan of the moniker “English sparkling wine” and favours Quintessence as a more evocative term which could be used instead.  Attempts have been made in the past to get winemakers to unite around names like Britagne (a non-starter if you ask me), but now that the Duchess of Cornwall herself has derided the term “English sparkling wine”, perhaps the time is ripe to make a change.

If you would like to suggest a new, more snappy name for English sparkling wine, please get in touch with me, heather@redwhiteandrose.co.uk.  It could be the start of something big.

In the meantime, it’s fingers crossed for fine, warm and dry weather for the next few weeks, so that in due course we can taste the sweet rewards of our mast year.