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Hambledon Classic Cuvée, Hampshire, England NV (from £ 28.03, laywheeler.com; Waitrose; majestic.co.uk) When I started writing about wine at the turn of the millennium, most of the English wine reporting portrayed an industry that lacked confidence. English winemakers seemed embarrassed, if not a bit on the defensive, about what they were doing to make wine so far north. A typical play would almost always say something like, “Not all eccentric retired generals with hobbies that have gotten out of hand and weird varietals that are only planted because they can handle the cold and the cold. humidity, you know! Climate change has played a role in the perceptual shift since then, but that’s only a small part of the story. More important is the realization, made by a handful, then something like a flood, of growers across the south that they had the conditions (including, most importantly, the soils) to grow Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot miller to produce a great sparkling wine. Hampshire’s Hambledon is one of the stars of this development, its classic cuvée is sparkling, Cox’s delight tangy and subtly toasted.
Hidden Spring Bacchus Smoked, East Sussex NV (from £ 18, hiddenspring.co.uk; buybritain.com) For chic Lay & Wheeler merchants, widespread recognition of English quality is very recent. In a recent press release announcing an offering of the best English sparkling wines, the company – which is more accustomed to composing its offerings of fine wines from the classic regions of France, Italy and Germany – stated “the idea of putting together a formal range of eleven of the best English sparkling wines, from four different producers, ranging from £ 28 to £ 148 a bottle, would have seemed unthinkable ten years ago. The four producers in question are representative of the new elite of the English wine in Sussex and Hampshire: Hambledon, Wiston Estate, Rathfinney Estate and, one of the main sparkling pioneers, Nyetimber – and the tasting of the wines from each estate in the Lay & Wheeler offering was a study in a consistent I wonder, however, when a comparable merchant will accord similar treatment to still wines from England. Certainly dry whites such as the gloriously verdant Smoked Bacchus, fl oral and racy pink grapefruit from Hidden Spring, improving all the time.
Domaine of the Bee The Bee Side Grenache, IGP Côtes Catalanes, Roussillon, France 2019 (from £ 18, noblegreenwines.co.uk; thesampler.co.uk; hic-winemerchants.com) As the results of this year’s Wine GB Awards illustrate quite dramatically, the current strengths of English wine are essentially sparkling wine. Of the 10 wines to win a trophy, the competition’s highest distinction, seven were sparkling, with one each going to a still rosé (Sussex’s Bluebell Vineyard Ashdown Rosé 2018), a Chardonnay (Kent’s Gusbourne Chardonnay Guenièvre 2019) and a Bacchus ( Kent’s Coty Bacchus 2019 from Chapel Down Kit). English red wines are certainly improving. But the fact that top-rated GB Awards reds are on the decline among silver medalists suggests that English red wine growers still have an interest in looking much further south if they want reliable maturity and longer styles. rich. This is the route taken by former supermarket buyer Justin Howard-Sneyd. The Grenache and Carignan-based red wines from his sunny little Roussillon estate, Domaine de l’Abeille, improve every year, with the highlights of his latest batch of releases being the deeply fragrant but ethereal and silky Knees 2019. (£ 35) and the vibrant, crisp, succulent The Bee-side.
Follow David Williams on Twitter @Daveydaibach
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