Blog | Joanna Simon

joanna simon

Search

WINE OF THE WEEK: Bolney Estate Pinot Noir 2019, Sussex, England

Apr 1

WINE OF THE WEEK: Bolney Estate Pinot Noir 2019, Sussex, England

£17.99, Waitrose I scheduled this lovely Pinot for the Easter weekend when I tasted it back in January and it now coincides neatly with the The Big English Wine Easter, a programme of online events – mostly on instagram – designed to support English wineries and raise money for The Drinks Trust and Hospitality Action (producers will contribute a percentage of sales from the weekend). The main event is on Saturday 3 April, from 7pm – 8pm, when wine lovers will open bottles of

WINE OF THE WEEK: Balfour Winemaker Collection Saignée Brut, Kent, England

Dec 30, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Balfour Winemaker Collection Saignée Brut, Kent, England

£29.99 (mix six), Majestic; £35, hushheath.com I'm posting early again this week to give you extra time to get this celebration-ready pink fizz in for new year's eve. It's a new wine from the Balfour winery at Hush Heath Estate in Kent and the first to be made there by the saignée method, which means the colour comes from the skins of the red grapes Pinot Noir and Meunier, rather than by the easier method of blending in some red wine to a white wine base. It's a pretty pale p

Festive Fizz 2019: anything but Champagne

Nov 27, 2019

Festive Fizz 2019: anything but Champagne

The first of the season's round-ups of recommendations is sparkling wines, from far and near but not Champagne – that gets its own show soon. Give or take special offers, they're in ascending order of price, except that this year I've given English sparkling wines their own zone (scroll down). Their quality warrants it. I'd like to have included more, but wanted to keep numbers manageable. One wine I intended recommending is out of stock, but it's worth noting for when it's b

WINE OF THE WEEK: Litmus Orange 2016, England

Jun 20, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Litmus Orange 2016, England

£14.99, Waitrose I've had to wait weeks for this unusual and delicious wine to be on the shelves before recommending it. It's now in selected stores and online later in the month, coinciding neatly with some discussion in the trade/on social media about whether Bacchus, the grape from which it's made, is a one-trick pony and/or should be pushed as the UK's signature white variety. Here's my two pennyworth: Litmus Orange is proof that Bacchus is capable of more than one expres

English sparkling wine taste-off

Apr 5, 2019

English sparkling wine taste-off

You wait ages for a new vintage of an English sparkling Blanc de Blancs, then two come along at once: Nyetimber 2013 and Gusbourne 2014. Taste-off time. It proved to be a more fascinating comparison of two vintages, two provenances and two producers than I’d anticipated. I’ve followed Nyetimber, the first English sparkling wine to be modelled on Champagne, on and off since the debut 1992 Blanc de Blancs was released in 1997 and have tracked it closely in the last decade under

From wine book editor to Winemaker of the Year – 5-minute Q&A with Emma Rice

May 29, 2018

From wine book editor to Winemaker of the Year – 5-minute Q&A with Emma Rice

I first met Emma Rice when she was the editor of the second edition of my book Discovering Wine. She went on to become one of the UK's first graduates of the new BSc (Hons) in Viticulture & Oenology at Plumpton College, Sussex in 2006. Now she's head winemaker of English sparkling wine producer Hattingley Valley and was UK Winemaker of the Year in both 2014 and 2016. This article first appeared in Waitrose Drinks magazine. Q: How old were you when you went to Plumpton? A: 28.

WINE OF THE WEEK: Bluebell Vineyard Hindleap Rosé Brut 2014, England

May 24, 2018

WINE OF THE WEEK: Bluebell Vineyard Hindleap Rosé Brut 2014, England

£29.95, Bluebell Vineyard Estates English Wine Week starts on Saturday. There's no guarantee of good weather, especially as there's a bank holiday involved, but there'll be no shortage of English wines on offer and more than 200 UK vineyards are now open to the public (you didn't know? Check out englishwineproducers.com). The producer of this week's wine, Bluebell Vineyard Estates on the edge of the Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, is open Monday to Saturday 10am–4pm (bluebellv

English fizz recommendations for English Wine Week

May 27, 2017

English fizz recommendations for English Wine Week

To celebrate English wine week, running from Saturday 27 May to Sunday 4 June, I've chosen some top quality, Champagne-style sparkling wines from three Hampshire Vineyards. They're part of a group of Hampshire vineyards that have banded together to promote their wines. All eight wines have retail stockists, but ideally, of course, you'd taste them in situ (quick – get out there while the weather is good!). Cottonworth This isn't one of England's, or Hampshire's, best known pr

WINE OF THE WEEK: Lyme Bay Shoreline 2014, Devon, England

Aug 18, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Lyme Bay Shoreline 2014, Devon, England

£12.85, lymebayenglishwines.co.uk; £12.99, waitrosecellar.com England’s sparkling wines crowd the headlines, but the best still wines have a deliciousness all of their own and a knack of capturing summer in every mouthwatering sip. Shoreline, made from the aptly named Bacchus grape together with Seyval Blanc, is effortlessly light but captivatingly intense and zingy. If you think of elderflowers, grapefruit, lemon and nettles, you won’t be far off. It’s made from vineyards in

WINE OF THE WEEK: Henners Brut 2010, East Sussex, England

May 26, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Henners Brut 2010, East Sussex, England

£22.99, D Byrne; £27.99, Corks Out, corksout.com English wine week starts on Saturday – a great opportunity to visit an English vineyard or simply to drink an English wine. I’ve chosen a sparkling wine because it’s what we do best, growing the same grape varieties as Champagne in similar soils and climate. There are so many good ones it's hard to choose – Nyetimber, Hambledon, Wiston, Hattingley, Gusbourne, Exton Park, Ambriel and Ridgeview were all in the running – but in th