#England

Jul 19

Prime Time for Pink: Summer 2022 Rosé Round-up Part 1

Update, August 12 I've just added two more wines to this, so it's now 12 appetite-whetting rosés. The additions, Ramón Bilbao Rosado and Señorio de Sarría Viñedo Cinco are both Spanish, from the neighbouring regions of Rioja and Navarra, and both are based on Garnacha, but they couldn't be more different in style. I haven't yet found a UK stockist of the 2021 vintage of the Señorio de Sarría, but look out for it if you're in Spain. Scroll down. Ten appetite-whetting rosés rou

Jun 24

Celebrating English Wines

My picks for the second weekend of English Wine Week celebrations. Not that they're only for English Wine Week. English wines are for every week of the year. Sparkling rosés come first, because I tasted quite a few, followed by white fizz, then still wines– red, rosé and orange. All the fizz is made by the classic method. Hambledon Classic Cuvée Rosé Fabulous pink fizz from England's oldest commercial vineyard. Strawberries and toasted brioche with a dash of cream and orange

Apr 7

WINE OF THE WEEK: Saddle Goose Skin Contact Bacchus 2020, England

£20, Saddle Goose Wine On the face of it, the only thing this straw-yellow wine has in common with the red wine that occupied this slot two weeks ago, Lyme Bay Pinot Noir, is the country of origin, England. That and the impressive quality. In fact, the grapes for both wines come from the same region, the UK’s new viticultural hotspot, Essex. To all intents and purposes, Saddle Goose Skin Contact Bacchus is an orange wine, although it’s a long way off the extreme end of the sp

Aug 19, 2021

WINE OF THE WEEK: Lyme Bay Chardonnay 2017, England

£17.99, Majestic I don't know where I would have thought this was from if I was tasting it blind, but you can be pretty certain I wouldn't have identified it as a vineyard in Essex vinified in Devon. And even if I'd hit upon England, I doubt I would have identified it as a product of the frost-devastated 2017 vintage. It goes to show how local and uneven frost can be: Martin's Lane Vineyard escaped most of the damage and the rest of the season was favourable enough for the ha

Aug 18, 2021

Ten Pinots for International Pinot Noir Day

I hadn't planned to do a Pinot Noir post to coincide with International Pinot Noir Day today, but it's a good opportunity to spread the love, not least because I was bowled over by the two Akitu wines below, especially the A1 2018, and by the latest Craggy Range Aroha. There's also an amphora-fermented Pinot from Shropshire, which is a revelation and a triumph. Who knew England could do this? And there are two Burgundies I wanted to highlight, although the delightful, mature

Aug 11, 2021

Prime Time for Pink: Summer 2021 Rosé Roundup Part 2

As in part one, there's a cross-section of styles, grape varieties, origins and prices here and I'm going from high to low again, so that the more expensive rosés don't get overlooked (scroll down for the £8.25 Spanish rosado). There are some food suggestions along the way, but there isn't a wine here that couldn't be taken to the table, thanks largely to the more interesting textures we're seeing in so many rosés. Finally, a reminder that if you want a comprehensive review o

Apr 1, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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