Wine of the Week – another stunning English Sparkler

I seem to have tasted a lot of good English sparkling wines lately – read about them here and here – well the other day I tasted yet another one that excited me enormously. So much so in fact that I made it my Wine of the Week.

Hambledon Vineyard on a south facing slope overlooked by Mill Down House. This was the birthplace of modern English wine in 1952 – photo courtesy of the estate.

Hambledon Classic Cuvée Brut
Hambledon Vineyard
Hambledon
Hampshire
England

The Hambledon Vineyard is historically very important to the English wine industry, because it was the first one to make a reputation for itself and can claim to be where the English wine revival started – bizarre as it sounds, Hambledon can also claim to be where cricket as we know it today began. The estate was originally planted in 1952 and although the wines did create a stir and even won some awards, the vineyard remained tiny, between 1 and 4 acres at various times, and so was essentially a hobby rather than a business, as is borne out by this amazing bit of film – click here to watch it. In fact by the 1990s the few grapes they grew there were being sold to other vineyards.

The estate was bought by Ian Kellet in 1999 and he decided to restore Hambledon and to make wine again. First he studied oenology at Plumpton College and then researched what would suit his land. As it is a south facing chalky slope, sparkling wine seemed a great idea and so in 2005 he planted a 10 acre test plot of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Having proved that the grapes were successful there, he planted more and created the winery. Today they farm 50 acres and make the wine in a state of the art, gravity fed winery – this is much gentler on the grapes than pumping. Since 2011 they have also employed Hervé Jestin as Chef de Caves, a position he had previously held at Champagne Duval-Leroy.

Looking down the slope – photo courtesy of the estate.

This is the standard wine of the estate and is a blend of 60% Chardonnay, 20% Pinot Noir and 20% Pinot Meunier. 90% comes from the excellent, ripe 2013 vintage, while 10% is reserve wines from previous vintages, some of which were barrel-aged to add extra riches and complexity. In addition 6% of the wine was barrel fermented and barrel aged and after the second fermentation in bottle, the wine was aged for 22 months on the lees.

The nose offers enticing freshly baked bread notes as well as plums, rich apple and a little note of smoky spice too. The palate is beautifully creamy, with a rich mousse, ripe peach and apple fruit and a lovely pure core of acidity and freshness. This sense of purity gives the wine wonderful verve and energy and balances the richness of the vintage. By any definition this is a fine sparkling wine that shows how seriously good English fizz can be – 93/100 points.

Available in the UK from Hambledon Vineyard at £28.50 per bottle, Waitrose at £30 per bottle, Marks & Spencer at £29.00 per bottle – for other stockists click here and here.

If you have never tasted a great English wine, or not understood all the fuss being made about English sparkling wine, then give this ago, it really is quite superb.

 

Wine of the Week – a friendly and great value Douro red

I love the wines from the Douro Valley in Portugal. This beautiful part of the world is an isolated, harsh, arid landscape that produces fabulous world class wines, as well as Ports. The wines tend to be red, but some lovely whites are made too. Douro wines are usually very high quality and although they can be pretty expensive, they generally deliver very good value for the quality that you get.

Map of the Douro – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement. Quinta do Noval is marked, just north of Pinhão.

Recently I have presented a couple of tastings on the wines of the Douro, which were very well received indeed and I will write about those soon. In the meantime I tasted a red wine from the Douro that delivered a huge amount of pleasure at a very good price, so I have made it my Wine of the Week.

Quinta do Noval.

2013 Lot 20 Douro Grande Reserva
DOC Douro
Douro Valley
Portugal

My normal go to good value Douro red wine is the Altano Organic – and which is currently on offer from Waitrose at just £7.99 – which I like very much, but this is another terrific wine that hows what the region can do at a very good price. It is a limited production wine – just 41,000 bottles – and forms part of Aldi’s Lot Series, which contains some other very good wines.

This Douro Valley red is a blend of three of the most important local grapes; Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca and Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo) and is made for Aldi by Quinta do Noval, which is one of the most famous and respected producers of Ports and table wines in the region. I recently showed their excellent 2010 Cedro do Noval and magnificent 2007 Quinta do Noval at a tasting and they were really appreciated.

The view from my room at Quinta do Nova a couple of years ago. The closest building is the winery.

The colour is a deep red, while the nose offers ripe black and red fruits together with liquorice, sweet spice and black pepper. The palate is incredibly fruity with black cherry, blackberry, plum, chocolate, pepper, wild herbs, a touch of spice and supple, smooth tannins. This is a wine that is clearly made to be drunk young. It is very soft, fruity, quite rich, herbal and spicy which makes it very attractive and easy to drink – 88/100 points.

Available in the UK from Aldi for £9.99 per bottle – a case of 6 bottles  is £59.94 and delivered for free.

This is a delicious wine that shows some of the flavour profile the Douro region gives, but a a very good price and in a very drinkable style, it’s well worth a try.

Court Garden – a range of fine English Sparkling Wines

We often read about how good, or at least potentially good, English sparkling wine is and it is always interesting to taste some more to see how our home grown wines are coming along.

In that spirit I recently led a tasting of fine English sparkling wines – I have tasted quite a few of those lately, click here. They were all from a single estate in Sussex and really excited everyone at the tasting and captured my imagination too.

Court Garden – photo courtesy of the estate.

The estate is called Court Garden and it is in Ditchling, a little north of Brighton in East Sussex. It has a long history, as a farm anyway, in Saxon times it was the garden far for the local manor house. After the conquest it formed the garden farm for the monastery in nearby Lewes, before being handed over to the crown during the Reformation. Presumably it produced food for the court at this time and this was when it acquired the Court Garden name, although it quite quickly became a privately owned farm as it has been ever since.

Today it is owned by the Corney family – the winemaker is Hugo Corney – who established it as a vineyard in 2005 by planting vines on a beautiful south facing slope. They have added to it over the years and now farm 17 hectares mainly planted with the 3 traditional Champagne grapes, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier. They also grow Pinot Gris, Ortega, Dornfelder and Rondo for their new still wines and have recently started planting 3 more grapes that were once widely seen in Champagne, but are no longer permitted to be planted – although a little still grows there – Pinot Blanc, Petit Meslier and Arbane.

As the crow flies, Court Garden is probably only something like 200 miles north of Champagne – but it is much further to drive – and that is partly why southern England suits sparkling wine so well. Conditions are not that different from Champagne, it is more maritime, so the winters in England are not so harsh and the summers are not as hot – roughly 1˚C cooler in fact. The geology is amazingly similar to Champagne, as the bedrock of chalk carries on under the channel and into the Champagne region.

Court Garden – photo courtesy of the estate.

In effect the conditions are marginal for grape growing and without that south facing slope acting as a sun trap, it just wouldn’t be viable to grow grapes.

We tasted four different sparkling wines from the estate:

2013 Court Garden Classic Cuvée Brut
This is the wine that the estate was created to make, it is the signature cuvée if you like, all the other wines have developed out of this.
The fruit all comes from the 2013 harvest, which was very good. The wine is a blend of 43% Chardonnay, 36% Pinot Noir & 21% Pinot Meunier and it was aged on the lees in bottle for 30 months before being disgorged. Dosage is 9 grams per litre, like most Brut Champagne.

The colour is gorgeous with a light honey, biscuity, bruised apple sort of colour with a touch of silver about it. The nose is terrific too, very yeasty with apple crumble, cooked apple and cider and pear notes, as well as green plum. The palate has a fine mousse, quite soft, with a creamy quality, richer apple, pure acidity cutting through and a long finish. If this is their basic wine, they have done a very, very good job indeed – 90/100 points.

Available from the estate for £25.65 per bottle – 2 bottles or more and delivery is free in the UK.

2011 Court Garden Rosé Brut
The rosé is made up of 65% Pinot Meunier & 35% Pinot Noir with just 0.5% still red Pinot Noir added before bottling to give the colour. The wine spent 54 months on the lees prior to being disgorged.

The colour is delicate and pale, like peach skin. The nose is of quite bright lifted red fruit, strawberry and cranberry especially, with strong autolytic biscuity, brioche and flaky pastry notes. The palate has surprisingly strong red fruit characters, cherry, cranberry, strawberry and red apple too. This is more mouth filling and weight, despite being from a cooler vintage – 91/100 points.

Available from the estate for £27.00 per bottle – 2 bottles or more and delivery is free in the UK.

2010 Court Garden Blanc de Noirs Brut
2010 was a great year with a long, warm summer that produced beautifully ripe fruit. They decided to create a richer style to show off that ripeness. This wine is 60% Pinot Noir & 40% Pinot Meunier and the wine was aged for 66 months on the lees before disgorging.

Lovely colour, green peach skin. The nose is very restrained at the moment, almost dumb – I expect it is a stage it’s going through, but there are hints of ripe green fruit, nuts, peach and apple. The joy here is on the palate though. It is wonderfully textured, flowing across your senses in a sensual, supple way.There are red fruit hints, rich apple and pear, a touch of something tropical and an underlying richness too. I loved this wine – 92/100 points.

Available from the estate for £27.00 per bottle – 2 bottles or more and delivery is free in the UK.

2010 Court Garden Ditchling Reserve Brut
The Ditchling Reserve is really the Blanc de Noirs – 60% Pinot Noir & 40% Pinot Meunier – aged for 9 months in used white wine barrels from Burgundy and Bordeaux before the second fermentation. It was then aged for 66 months on the lees before disgorging.

The colour is pale gold straw, while the nose is open and rich with wafts of apple pie, raspberry, strudel, brioche, a touch of spice and creamy vanilla. The palate is rich and seductive with red fruit, ripe peach, apple compôte, honey,  a lovely texture and a long rich finish. A superb sparkling wine, full of character and flavour – 93/100 points.

Available from the estate for £29.55 per bottle – 2 bottles or more and delivery is free in the UK.

This was an impressive line up of fine estate bottled sparkling wines, the fact that they come from England is just a bonus. The quality was very impressive and I look forward to seeing how they wines develop as the vines age. The wines tell a wonderful story, the quality is very high and the represent great value for money too. They might just be the perfect thing for Christmas? Court Garden also host some lovely winery and vineyard tours, which could also make excellent Christmas presents – click here for details.

An Afterthought
Has anyone else been astonished that you cannot buy English Sparkling wines in British Airports? I would grab a bottle to share with people overseas almost every time I flew, but they are not available. There is loads of Champagne – at prices no cheaper than on the high street mind – pimped up Prosecco, but no English fizz.

That shouldn’t be allowed, they should stock our own wines so that people take them all around the world and share the story.

Wine of the Week – a lovely sparkling wine

Christmas is coming, quite fast it feels, so I am tasting a lot of wine with an eye to festive drinking.

I don’t know about you, but I really like a good bit of fizz at Christmas as I can drink it with all sorts of different foods, or none. Of late I have been tasting some rather wonderful English sparkling wines and I will tell you about some of them soon, but in the meantime I tasted a surprisingly good English sparkling wine recently that is easily available and good value for money too, so I have made it my Wine of the Week – even though there is absolutely nothing to celebrate given the dire world situation today.

Chalk Valley Brut
Denbies Wine Estate
Dorking
Surrey
England

English sparkling wine is all the rage at the moment and rightly so as they can be very good indeed. However, they aren’t all as good as the best ones, so you do have to be careful. This wine is a special cuvée made for Aldi by Denbies Estate in Dorking. I have enjoyed visiting Denbies in the past, it is a lovely place to visit with a couple very nice restaurants, a casual one and a more formal proper restaurant. However, I have often been wary of their wines in the past as I didn’t always find them particularly exciting. If this wine is anything to go by though, then I might have been doing them an injustice. I am sure that their sparkling wines used to taste very green and lean, which can be a problem in our climate, but is most certainly not the case here.

Denise Wine Estate, Dorking, Surrey – photo courtesy of the estate.

The wine is made by the traditional method and is a blend of 54% Seyval Blanc, 34% Pinot Noir, 8% Chardonnay 8% and 4% Pinot Blanc, all aged on the lees for 18 months.

My first clue that this might be rather good, was the rich, golden buttery colour. The nose is like freshly baked rolls and seaside rockpools together with some apple and apricot compote.

The palate is astonishingly rich and weighty with a fine mousse, a remarkable sweetness of ripe apricot, orange and apple fruit as well as a little sweet spice and creaminess, although the wine is dry. I was really thrilled by this wine, it is very drinkable and enjoyable – 88/100 points.

This is a good sparkling wine which gives you a good idea about English fizz and is easily available in the UK at a very good price.

 Available in the UK from Aldi for £14.99 per bottle – £ 89.94 per case of 6 bottles including free delivery.