English Sparkling Wine

Peter Murphy of the Harrogate Medical Wine Society presented a selection of fine English Sparkling Wines on Wednesday 28 September at the Masonic Hall in Harrogate.

Peter Murphy

The 23 members who attended the evening tasting, sipped chilled Chakana Nuna Vineyard Rosé, mingled and chatted. Soft music played in the background. The wine is a blend of 47% Syrah, 34% Malbec & 19% Tannat, grown and vinified biodynamically. (£9.29 HMWS). (14.5)

The tasting proper started with Nytimber Special Cuveé – 55 to 65% Chardonnay, 30 to 40% Pinot Noir  and 5 to 15% Pinot Meunier from vineyards in West Sussex and Hampshire. It has a residual sugar content of 10 g/L and the pH is 3.0. The ABV is 12%. (£27.60). (16)

Leckford Estate Brut 2018 is a blend of 49% Chardonnay, 15% Pinot Meunier and 36% Pinot Noir sourced from Waitrose’s own five hectare farm in Hampshire planted in 2009 and fermented and aged at the Ridgeview estate in the South Downs. It is matured on its lees for 24 months before disgorgement. It made the Nytimber taste even more elegant! (£26.99). (15)

Rathfinny Blanc de Blanc from the excellent 2018 vintage is 100% Sussex Chardonnay with a dosage of 3 g/L. It was aged on lees for 30 months. (£40.50). (16)

Coates & Sealy Brut Reserve NV is 40% Chardonnay, 50% Pinot Noir and 10% Pinot Meunier from Hampshire, matured on lees for 3 years. The dosage is 6 g/L. Showed significant autolysis. (£27.85). (16)

Gusbourne Exclusive Release 2018 is 100% Chardonnay from Kent and West Sussex, whole bunch pressed and a small percentage fermented in old oak barrels for complexity. Lees aged for 33 months. Residual sugar is 11.6 g/L. (£27.75). (16.5)

Nyetimber Rose is 45 to 75% Chardonnay, 25 to 55% Pinot Noir  and less than 5% Pinot Meunier. It has up to 30% reserve wines and 9 g/L of residual sugar. (£39.99). (16)

The tasting was followed by a two-course supper of Pork Fillet Stroganoff with Jasmine Rice and French Apple Tart with Chantilly Cream.

Cantele 2018 Primitivo del Salento was poured with the Pork Stroganoff. The Primitivo is destemmed and crushed and the must macerated with skin contact for 6-7 days at 25-26°C. The wine is then aged in barriques for approximately 6 months.

(The following members of the Harrogate Medical Wine Society were present: Ian & Carol Bexon (Harrogate), Ian & Elizabeth Botwright (Ripon), Rob & Pauline Buckley (Leeds), Dr. & Mrs. Richard Chave-Cox (Harrogate), Dr. & Mrs. Bernard Dias (Harrogate), Jane Greenwood (Leeds), Prof. & Mrs. Charles Joslin (Harrogate), Douglas & Gloria McFarlane (Harrogate), Peter & Carol Murphy (Ackworth), John & Pat Shore (Harrogate), Drs. Alisdair & Elma Stewart (Harrogate), Jane Trewhella (Otley), Les Wilson (Harrogate). Tickets for the event were priced £36 pp inclusive of supper with wine.

(September HMWS raffle for 4 bottles of Warwick Professor Black Pitch Black 2017 (£11.80 HMWS) drawn at the tasting, were won by Rob Buckley, Douglas McFarlane, John Shore and Les Wilson.)

Further Reading

• 12 best English sparkling wines for toasting special occasions – The Independent
• The 13 best English sparkling wines reviewed – BBCgood food.com
• Nytimber
• Leckford Estate
• Rathfinny Estate
• Gusbourne Estate
• Chakana Estate
• Cantele
• Warwick Wine Estate

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“Winemaking in England may date back to the Romans, but the modern English wine business is very young. As Margaret Rand put it in a fascinating piece on English winegrowing soils first published in issue 45 of The World of Fine Wine back in September, 2014, it effectively begins at the moment “when Major-General Sir Guy Salisbury-Jones looked out of his window in 1951 and decided to plant vines for what became England’s first commercial vineyard.”

As Rand says, there was an element of happenstance to the position of all of England’s early vineyards. Salisbury-Jones chose “the slope below his house” in Hambledon, Hampshire. “When Bob Lindo of Camel Valley in Cornwall first planted, it was because people kept saying that the steep, south-facing slope of his sheep farm was warmer than where they’d come from.”

“Both planted for still wine,” Rand continues, as did the majority of English wine producers until the beginning of the 21st century.

“When they reoriented themselves to sparkling, it was initially in a similarly ad hoc fashion. Now, however, big money is coming in, and it’s going into sparkling.

“It’s flowing smoothly from hedge funds to hillside, from City to village. Retail prices are (so far) about 20 percent below those of big-brand Champagnes, and in five years’ time, there’ll be around 5 million bottles of English fizz, nearly all made from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier. English sparkling is positioning itself to compete with the grown-ups.”

Over the past year, in an ongoing series, Albion Awakes, first published in the print edition of The World of Fine Wine, Rand has been looking at how this accelerating and increasingly serious, grown-up industry has developed since she first wrote those words.

This week, we’ve made the first three of Rand’s vivacious profiles of some of the leading lights of English sparkling wine available online for the first time, alongside Simon Field MW’s equally lively and detailed portrait of Hampshire’s Exton Park.

Together, the pieces provide a vivid insight into the personalities and ideas working in what Lindo, speaking to Rand in 2014, called “the best experimental vineyard in the world”—an eclectic crew of wine school graduates and winemaking autodidacts who are already making some of the world’s finest sparkling wines.” – David Williams, worldoffinewine.com. October 2022

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