It's Time for English WIne!

On 24th February I hosted the first Deptford and New Cross Wine Club of the year. As I've mentioned before it took place at the new bar and restaurant Buster Mantis, owned by Gordon McGowan. After a little hiatus it was decided that I would start the new run of clubs with a focus on local wines, there being quite a local theme running with the sourcing of beers from Brockley and Peckham and a wine I put on the wine list, grapes grown in Kent and wine made in London! Over the last year or so there have been many UK wines featured at trade tastings and quite a few popping up in the supermarkets. Noble Rot magazine had fairly recently organised a Champagne vs English Sparkles blind tasting where, not only were the judges (Jancis Robinson, Jamie Goode, Neil Martin etc) unable to spot the difference, the actual winner was the Hambledon Classic Cuvée with 14.88 points and the Nyetimber Classic Cuvée 2010 coming in second with 14.58 beating classic Grande Marques Champagnes like Pol Roger Brut Reserve and Taittinger Brut Reserve, coming third and fourth respectively. I don't use that article as evidence that English sparkling wine is better than Champagne, but it is certainly being produced to a very high standard and at similar price points and less carbon footprint and import tax thrown into the mix it is now a very viable option for a celebratory occasion. But it isn't just sparkles that are making a wave. Many growers and producers are growing grapes for white wine, the popular grape varieties being Bacchus (a cross between a Silvaner x Riesling cross with Muller - Thurgau) Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc and, heck why not, if you can do it for bubbly, Pinot Noir. The red climatically doesn't fare as well it not being very well suited to black grape varieties but there are some very good (red) Pinot Noirs, reminiscent maybe of those made in Germany, that are, very wisely by the Germans, not let out of the country.




UK wine is seriously on a roll. Many vineyards have been properly established and have been able to produce wine since around 2007, 2008. This means that quite literally the fruits of the growers' labour are now ready (and have been for some time) to enjoy and appreciate. The vineyards are relatively small holdings with start-up costs which explains the higher than average price of the wines, but as they expand and become profitable (which looks very likely) this may well change over time. Like the Champagne region in France there is vintage variation and growers have already experienced the inconsistency, which is a big problem when there aren't many grapes being grown in the first place but can be overcome when there is a larger selection of grapes to choose from grown over larger areas. 2012 was a disaster year for many estates due to the high rainfall. Only 1.03 million bottles of wine were produced, compared to 4.05 million in 2010, and Nyetimber announced that they would not be bottling a 2012 vintage, judging it to not be good enough. Yet the 2013 vintage bounced back with 4.45 million bottles produced and 2014 was a bumper harvest with 6.3 million bottles and 2015 and set to be even better so what better time to start familiarising ourselves with this booming home grown product? Waitrose definitely understands the importance of this market and online it is possible to buy 90 wines from over 30 English and Welsh producers and their sales of UK wine (of which they own 60% market share) has gone up by 177%. So you may not be surprised that the majority of wines at the tasting have been sourced from Waitrose. There are many other fantastic wines all over the UK but I wanted to showcase ones that could be bought relatively easily. So this was the list:

1. Chapel Down Rosé NV- Waitrose £24.99
Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier (Kent)


2. Ridgeview Bloomsbury 2013 - Waitrose £24.99
Chardonnay, Pinot Noir (East Sussex)


3. Nyetimber Classic Cuvée 2010 – The Wine Society £27.50
Chardonnay, Pinot Noir (West Sussex)


4. London Cru Bacchus 2014 – London Cru Winery £15
100% Bacchus (Kent)


5. Stopham Estate Pinot Blanc 2013- Waitrose £14.99
100% Pinot Blanc (Sussex)


6. Litmus White Pinot 2012 – Marks and Spencer £22
100% Pinot Noir (Surrey)


7. Bolney Estate Pinot Noir 2014 - Waitrose £15.99
100% Pinot Noir (Sussex)


8. Denbies Noble Harvest 2014 – Waitrose £19.99 (37.5cl)
100% Ortega (Surrey)




The General feedback from the guests was very positive. Starting with the Chapel Down Rosé, thoughts were that its lightness and fruitiness were very pleasing, it was evident that this was a crowd pleaser and there were suggestions that it would make a great summer sparkling drink, and I have to say that I agree. It was a great, fun wine to start with.

Generally with the Ridgeview most agreed that this was a good value alternative to a Non Vintage Champagne, for some this was their first ever UK white sparkling wine and they were very impressed. Personally I love the butter, brioche and creamy apple notes in this sparkling wine and can totally understand it's popularity and when on offer this is very good value for money. However the following white sparkling, the Nyetimber 2010 Classic Cuvée stole this part of the show. The complexity in this was really appreciated, fruit pies, zesty citrus, floral and biscuit notes all abound. I know that many guests went out and bought this in the following days!

I was excited to present the London Cru Bacchus and happily most guests shared my admiration of this wine. The usual Sauvignon Blanc comparisons were made.The aromatic style with floral and herbaceous characteristics was appreciated and there was excitement that this cross grape was proving to do so well. There was a lot of interest in the winery too, I mean the only London winery making English wine! Pretty cool.
With the Stopham Pinot Blanc there were slightly mixed reviews. Some felt it was too acidic and a bit neutral whereas others felt it to be subtly complex with an interesting mid palate where after a hit of stone fruit some interesting more herbal notes appeared along with minerality. So this was an interesting one!
The white Litmus Pinot Noir was again a wine with mixed reviews, for some it was too heavy and over oaked in a slightly new world way but for others it had the body that they were craving after so many lighter bodied whites and most were stunned that a UK wine could taste like this and that it was Pinot Noir. I had to include this wine in the line up because it really is one of a kind being made in the UK and demonstrates the breadth of styles of wine currently being produced.
The Bolney Estate red Pinot Noir was the only red on the list and most were appreciative of a red at this point. One guest found it to be out of balance but most were surprised by the body, a bit fuller than they were expecting, and enjoyed the red fruit flavours and touches of spice that came through. The majority were very happy with it. I found it to be very pleasant and appreciated the red berry flavours with some spice lending that bit of depth.
The Denbies Noble Harvest was a triumph. This was very popular, those that said they didn't usually like sweet wine loved this and were very interested by how it was made. Knowing how few bottles are actually made also added to the intrigue and favourable comparisons to Sauternes were made. I am a huge fan of Coteaux du Layon so this was definitely my cup of tea with a slightly fresher, more citrusy acidic style of sweet wine but with those gorgeous honeyed botrytis flavours.

Overall the lack of red was noted but I felt that most reds easily available on the market are not hugely noteworthy, but this is definitely an area I need to explore more. I wanted to showcase wines that could hold their own internationally which I think they all could, so that was the main reason for that particular selection. I also wanted them to be easily available and not from all the same producers although there were some overlaps. The fact that they were all from the South of England was a coincidence but then three featured were sparkling and that is where the most of the best sparkling wine is currently coming is from!

It was great to have John Mobbs of www.greatbritishwine.com there with his fantastic knowledge of all things UK wine based, and his amazing photography skills! He has written a fantastic article (here) about the event and I highly recommend looking through his excellent website and following him on Vivino!

Over this Easter weekend I will be writing about the last wine club held at Buster Mantis where we explored Northern Spain (rather different from England!). It was great fun and I'm really looking forward to the next Deptford & New Cross Wine Club on varietals and understanding the label which will be on April 22nd at London Velo Cafe. May and June dates at Buster Mantis will be released soon so keep checking in!

Have a great Bank Holiday weekend and cheers!

Bella Italia

Italian wine has always mystified me, as an impassioned lover of all things French probably the most I knew about Italian wine was what is on the Pizza Express Wine List (Montepulciano d'Abruzzo anyone?!). Over the past year or so I have attempted to rectify this. Italian wine has had a bad time over the decades, the overproduction still haunts its (now much improved) reputation and the mass immigration in the late 19th and early 20th century affected the production significantly. However from what I have recently experienced it is currently one of the most exciting wine countries and my trips there have been as enlightening as they have been enjoyable. On my last (Chateau Canard) blog I wrote about Puglia. The wine production there and in Sicily has been growing and evolving loads recently and the Etna wines are gaining the notoriety (and price tags) of their Northern Piedmont cousins. There are also some very refined Primitivos making the rounds in Puglia. I have also been tasting some fabulous Italian wines as part of my WSET Diploma course. Here they are below and I recommend every one of them!





Bearing in mind that I have a WSET Sparkling Wine exam coming up very soon, it felt like a good idea to take a trip to Milan. Milan is in Lombardy which is the home of the severely under recognised Franciacorta, it also happens to be just above Emilia Romagna, home of Lambrusco, just below Veneto, home of Prosecco and rather a bit further south than Piedmont the home of Asti or Moscato d'Asti. Funnily enough all these regions also produce outstanding still wines (for when revision time was over!).

The first night at a Roman restaurant Rugantino we got stuck into some Lambrusco. Fun, fizzy and fruity (strawberry and cranberry) I think is the best way to describe this, very easy to drink! Chiarli are a big producer and funnily enough the following week I met them at The Great Western Wine Tasting on Brick Lane where they had brought some of their more prestigious sparkling wines and very delicious they were too. Following that I tried for the first time a Lagrein wine, this is a native grape from the very northerly region of Alto Aldige which is a very interesting, almost autonomous region where they have their own language and the labels are often written in Italian and German! This was a wine with salinity and red and black fruit aromas and flavours, high tannins, but firm. This was an earthy wine with great depth and great value.

We were then plied with Grappa by the very friendly waiter who incidentally did nearly kill me by inadvertently throwing a glass at me, no harm done though, apart from the following morning's headache (Grappa induced).

The following day was another revision session. After an epic walk around the city we stumbled across a gem of a wine bar Don Tannino in the Brera district. It was happened upon totally by chance, and what a chance that was! The owner, Damiano is a total wine aficionado and was very happy to see me pointing and sniffing and swirling away at the wines and after we got over the language barrier (two hours of using google translate until we realised we could all communicate in French) great wine chats were had and many glasses of a fabulous vintage rosé Franciacorta (my first) and some wonderful Barolo, not to mention the lovely Parma ham and cheese foccacia sandwich (which paired really rather well with the Barolo!). We felt very at home and I now have a new Italian friend! The Franciacorta had a great onion skin colour, with a lovely sour dough nose, with softened ripe fruit, raspberry and pink lady apple, crisp acidity and with slightly savoury umami mushroom notes. The Barolo had the classic violets and cherry flavours with ripe and candied properties. There ware fantastic hints of black pepper and medicinal notes including eucalyptus. Big tannins which evolved from slightly grainy to velvety in the mouth with a beautiful lengthy finish.

Great Pairing!

Later that evening some Chianti Classico was consumed with dinner from the famous Tuscan producers Antinori with much veal! This was at the Tuscan restaurant Trattoria Torre Di Pisa.






It was a real struggle trying to eat that veal!

Some architectural culture was on the cards the following day with a visit to the Duomo and it's surroundings followed by yet more Franciacorta, this time by a super vintage Ca' del Bosco, again, great autolytic yeast notes, streaks of minerality and apple and peach featuring too with a bit of wet wool! Beautifully crisp acidity, this is fast becoming my favourite tipple!

 
And then dinner at the Milanese restaurant L'Altra Isola which was recommended by Damiano for their legendary Osso Buco which was necessary to pair with yet again more Barolo, this 2011 one had flavours of red cherry and vanilla with huge acidity and a touch of boot polish all held together with ripe red and black berries.



Bit miffed by their wine storage choices though..!

All in all a great and indulgent trip to Milan, promising myself a few days off the wine while taking stock of the Alps on the way back to London!