The English Sparkling Wines

Until recently, English wines, especially sparkling, were just known and consumed in Britain. It begins to change! Everyone is speaking about the climate change... The Champagne Climate arriving to the South of England with rumours of Champagne houses buying or looking for vinelands in the Sussex.

English wines (still or sparkling) really improved over the past few years. English sparkling are now competing with Champagne. The most recent blind tasting took place the 10th March 2008 (so few days ago!) organised by Decanter.

The tasters were Stephen Skelton MW, wine expert, Tom Stevenson, Champagne specialist, Oz Clarke, Benoit Gouez, Chef de Caves at Moet & Chandon, Waitrose’s Dee Blackstock MW, Andrew Jefford, award-winning wine writer and Decanter columnist and Steven Spurrier, Decanter's contributing editor.

Over 60 sparkling wines from England, Wales and the Channel Islands, 3 Champagnes and one sparkling wine from Napa Valley in California were tasted. The Top 3 Sparkling wines were Theale Vineyard Founder’s Reserve 2003. Meopham Valley rose and Plumpton Estate’s The Dean.

The first Champagne, Duval-Leroy, ranked seventh. It was beaten by UK offerings from Camel Valley, Ridgeview, Nytimber, Denbies and Balfour Vineyards.

The tasters agreed on some aspects:
-The elite of English sparkling can face in blind tasting Champagnes without blushing

-Except with exceptional vintage, English sparkling have some problems with acidity even (too present even for the best producers) 'Acidity was always a problem with English sparkling wines and I don't see that improving,' said Skelton. 'That was the real problem with the good wines.' Others agreed, citing winemaking faults and a lack of elegance in some wines.

-Traditional grapes of Champagne (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier) give better results than autochthones grapes as Seyval Blanc or Huxelrebe, to reserve for still wines. 'Some from the non-champagne varieties would have been better without the bubbles,' said Stevenson.

-Pink sparkling category showed ‘certainly some horrors’, despite a rose wine coming second.

'I was hoping we'd got over this,' said Jefford. 'There were some quite good wines,' he added. 'We should keep trying. If we had done this 10 years ago, it would have be a lot worse.'

A new phenomenon

UK supermarket chain Waitrose has announced they will plant vines to make their own sparkling wine. They hope to plant 4 or 5 hectares of Champagne grapes, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir on their 1,600ha farm in Hampshire in Southern England this year.

We know that chalk hills and clay loam soils are the best to grow Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier as in Champagne or Chablis. That’s on that kind of soil Waitrose will plant their vines.

The Waitrose sparkling will be ready for sell in 2014.

The United Kingdom has currently 300 vineyards and produces around 3.3 million bottles per year, but both planting and production are set to increase in coming years to an exemption from the European Union vine planting ban.

According to a Decanter’s journalist,’Land in southern England, especially Sussex, Dorset and Hampshire, is considered ideal for growing grapes for sparkling wine. French producers including Duval Leroy and Boisset are known to be - or to have been - actively looking for vineland in the region. ‘

Still according to Decanter, ’Other producers as diverse as Chateau Pape Clement proprietor Bernard Magrez, and Randall Grahm, owner of Bonny Doon in Santa Cruz, have expressed varying degrees of interest in southern England, which has the great advantage of costing a fraction of continental vineland.’