The summer Season
Guided by the nose of wine expert Harry Eyres, the COUNTRY LIFE team tasted some of England’s finest sparkling wines and found elegance and finesse, with notes of hedgerows and seaside air, to compete with any fizz from across the Channel–surely, this is what we should be drinking now
ISOMETIMES think English sparkling wine is like English classical music. That is to say, we suffer from an inferiority complex in this area: having been for so long under a shadow, whether of the German-Austrian musical tradition or of the unquestioned pre-eminence of Champagne, we can’t quite believe our native productions are as good as they actually are. On occasions, it has taken outsiders to prove the point, as the great Austro-Hungarian conductor Hans Richter did by conducting the first performances of Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Dream of Gerontius and 1st Symphony, or as the Champagne houses of Taittinger and Pommery-Vranken have done by buying land in southern England—to make English sparkling wine, not Champagne, of course.
In fact, both the best English music and the best English sparkling wine are quite brilliant: listening to the Angel’s Farewell from Gerontius sung by Felicity Palmer the other day, I felt it was as beautiful as anything written in the past 150 years. It was the same for the COUNTRY LIFE tasting of top English sparklers—conducted on a springlike March day—when wines from producers such as Hattingley Valley, Gusbourne and The Grange were equally as thrilling. English sparkling wine has come of age in the past decade or so. The industry has moved from a pioneer period, with a preponderance of peppery retired majors, through a sometimes awkward adolescence to a confident early adulthood. A number of factors have helped: the warming of the climate, although worrying in many ways, has meant that Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Meunier, the three grapes of Champagne, have no difficulty ripening consistently; serious money has flowed in; and a new generation of highly professional viticulturist and winemakers has taken over from the sometimes inspired, sometimes less inspired amateurs of the early days.
Southern England suits the production of fine sparkling wine made by the classic method of secondary fermentation in bottle. In many parts, chalk soils very similar to those of Champagne are found; the climate is still coolish, but not too cool (and certainly not too warm, as parts of Champagne are becoming), with long growing seasons, which give grapes aromatic intensity and freshness. As Brad Greatrix, head of winemaking at Nyetimber, said to me a few years ago: ‘England is the most exciting place to be making traditionalmethod sparkling wine in the world.’
In terms of scale, of course, English sparkling wine is sti
