WINE OF THE WEEK: Flint Vineyard Silex 2024, England

£26.99, Flint Vineyard, The Vineking

English still wines don’t get much better than this crystalline, polished dry white made in Norfolk from grapes grown in Essex and in Flint’s own vineyard in Earsham, Norfolk. It’s all the more of an achievement in a year as tricky, cool and wet as 2024.

Silex is a wine Ben Witchell, founder of Flint Vineyard, has been making since 2017, but each vintage is different, the blend changing according to the year, the idea simply (or not so simply in 2024) being to show the best of each harvest.

The 2024 Silex is a blend of two-thirds Chardonnay from Whitewolfe Vineyard in Kent and Martin’s Lane Vineyard in Crouch Valley, Essex together with Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris from Flint Vineyard (24%, 6% and 4% respectively).

Part was fermented in a concrete egg, part in neutral oak and part in seasoned barrels, variously to enhance the purity, precision, breadth and texture. In the final blend, a quarter of the Chardonnay had been fermented and aged in the egg and three barrels of Chardonnay from the more benign, generous 2023 vintage had been added.

The resulting wine comes in quietly and opens up beautifully, drifting through melon, citrus and honeysuckle fragrance, lemon-granita fruit, a hint of toasted almond, deftly controlled high-wire acidity and chalk-smooth texture and minerality.

You could be drinking Flint Vineyard Silex 2024 in five years’ time if kept in cellar conditions, but assuming you want to drink some during English Wine Week (June 20–28), what about seafood (lobster, why not?), white fish, oily fish, salmon with hollandaise, asparagus, risi e bisi, pasta with ricotta, broccoli/broad beans/peas and lemon, or a table or picnic groaning with salads. 11.5%. Empty bottle weight: 493g

Flint Vineyard Silex 2024, England

£26.99, or £150 for 6, Flint Vineyard; £28.99, The Vineking

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