ENGLISH WINE

Drink

Gustav Temple meets a David and a Goliath of wine production in East Sussex, to find out all the whys and wherefores of this burgeoning industry

As with most matters concerning these fair isles, as soon as one sets foot in any particular department, the whole English v British question comes up, and this is particularly true of the wine produced on these shores. And with another negative consequence of Brexit being the threat of prices for our beloved European wine slowly increasing, we should take note that, simultaneously, our climactic temperatures are also increasing. Is there a future for English wine as a full replacement for the wines of Tuscany, Bordeaux and Rioja? I set forth into the valleys of East Sussex to meet two gentlemen who were qualified to inform me, and whether we should be calling it English or British wine. “It’s more complicated here than in southern Europe, where the wine regions like Lombardy or Tuscany are within both geological and political boundaries. Sussex is only a political boundary, so it becomes difficult to distinguish it geologically from Kent or Hampshire, but the Sussex Sparkling PDO is a good start”

MEETING DAVID

My first port of call was the ‘David’ of Sussex wine, one Ivan Weightman, doyen of Wolstonbury Wines near Hassocks, West Sussex, in the shadow of Wolstonbury Hill – which Churchill nearly climbed once but drank a pint of champagne instead (see below).

Wolstonbury Wines make sparkling and still wine, their first harvest only in 2018. With nothing more than a background in farming (his father grows more traditional crops in County Durham), Ivan planted his first vines in 2015, choosing the Bacchus and Reichensteiner grapes for their adaptability to the local terroir. Sussex lies in the same chalk basin that extends to the Champagne region of France, but our weather has yet to catch up with their longer, hotter summers. The threat of frost is always lurking around the corner in England and this limits which grapes can be successfully harvested.

Why, I asked, are so many Sussex vineyards focusing on sparkling wine and not still wine? “To make still Chardonnay in the UK you’d have to have an exceptional summer,” says Ivan, “like the long summers of the Champagne region. You crop the grapes for sparkling wine a few weeks earlier, and that makes all the difference in our shorter summers.”

However, Wolstonbury have taken the plunge and produced both still and sparkling wines. Their first crop yielded 6.2 tons of grapes, easily enough for a decent first run of the two white wines they have called simply Bacchus and Bacchus Reichensteiner (see tasting notes below). This successful yield involved some processes that sounded positively mediaeval: “Some vineyards burn candles to raise the temperature around the vines. But paraffin based candles are not good for the environment and 450 candles just for our one hectare would cost us £4,000 in one night! So we burn hay bales or timber instead. We planted the whole vineyard over two days, out there by tractor light at night. It took two days to recover, but it was worth it.”

Currently Wolstonbury have their grapes turned into wine at a local winery, but this year they will be building their own winery and scaling up production. At the moment they sell mainly to local walkers and online. The farm happens to be in a very attractive walking area and even while I was there, visitors dropped in to sample the wines in an attractive outdoor Cellar Door. When the winery is built and the vineyards expanded to two or three hectares, Wolstonbury hopes to be producing 20,000 bottles of still and sparkling wine.

“We were over the moon when we got our first harvest. We’ve got a great piece of ground – 90 acres in total, of which only 2.4 acres will be vineyards. A small vineyard is better for us, creating more diversity in the key zone and using the rest for cropping hay. We face directly south but Wolstonbury Hill gives good sun protection and the ground drops away to the east and west, giving frost drainage. We’re part of the Danny Estate, where Churchill attended the drawing up of the armistice for the First World War with Lloyd George on 13th October, 1918. There are accounts of Churchill walking through our farm, though he never made it up the hill. I like the idea of producing a pint-sized bottle of sparkling wine, like the one that Winston had every day for lunch.”

MEETING GOLIATH

Next stop was the Rathfinny Wine Estate in East Sussex, an enormous 600-acre estate with 227 acres of vineyards. When expanded over the next six years to its full capacity of 350 acres, Rathfinny will be producing nearly 80,000 cases of sparkling wine per annum.

I met Rathfinny’s Brand Ambassador Richard James to find out what Goliath has to say about English wine production. After digressing into whether the three-button collar on a bespoke shirt by tailor Gresham Blake was acceptable, we got down to the nitty-gritty of Protected Domains of Origin (PDOs). Barely had the words “British wine” left my lips when Richard’s hand was raised to stop me.

“The term ‘British wine’ dates back to the early 80s, when grapes were brought into Britain from elsewhere to make wine here. The important PDOs these days are ‘English Wine’, ‘English Sparkling’ and ‘Sussex Sparkling’, all of which are produced by Rathfinny. Sussex Sparkling was only set in law three years ago, approved by the EU for export.

“It’s more complicated here than in southern Europe, where the famous wine regions like Lombardy or Tuscany are within both geological and political boundaries. Sussex is only a political boundary, so it becomes difficult to distinguish it geologically from Kent or Hampshire, but the Sussex Sparkling PDO is a good start, and will develop as time goes on.”

While Brexit pushes up prices of imported European wine, has it had any effect on the production of English wine? “Only when it comes to all the extra paperwork when importing stock such as bottles and corks. A British manufacturer has yet to produce sparkling wine bottles in sufficient volume.”

So why do we need European wine at all? “Weather. It will be at least 50 years until England is able to produce a Shiraz or a Cabernet Sauvignon, because we simply don’t have long enough summers. The grapes we grow at Rathfinny are the classic three for sparkling wine: Pinot Noir, Pinot Meurnier and Chardonnay.”

Rathfinny’s Sussex Sparklings are legion, accounting for 98% of their production, from a Classic Cuvée 2016, to Blanc de Noirs 2016, Blanc de Blancs 2016 and Rosé Brut 2017. They also produce small batches of still wine under the label Cradle Valley, purely because the first pressing of a new harvest can be turned into still wine the following year, and they wanted to start using their vastly expensive winery equipment and get something on the market while the sparkling wine did its time in the cellar.

We headed over to the winery to take a look, by car, as it would have been a good seven-minute walk. As well as the floor-to-ceiling wine stills, there is a piece of equipment normally associated with kidney failure in humans – a dialysis machine. “Most other wineries cool the grape juice down to zero degrees in vast stills, which takes up a lot of time and energy – even though everything at Rathfinny is solar powered. This electro-dialysis machine filters all impurities out of the wine, is far gentler on the product and uses far less energy.”

Rathfinny’s environmental credentials extend everywhere and make the whole enterprise entirely sustainable. Richard pointed out the strips of land between every ten vines in the vast valley before us, where, instead of using any insecticide, species of wildflower are planted that attract larger insects that feed off the smaller unwanted insects. Pheromone attractors are also used, to allow the estate to monitor numbers of specific moth species.

If it all sounds rather technical and industrial, harvest season in mid-October at Rathfinny is quite the opposite. Only local people are employed, most of them walking up to the estate from the surrounding villages and towns like Seaford and Newhaven. Richard compared it to the 1950s tradition of Londoners going down to Kent for hop picking. It’s a bit of a family day out; the work isn’t backbreaking, as they are not on a steep slope and there are no heavy baskets to carry, plus there is a selection of wine at the end of it.

The Rathfinny vision, assisted by huge amounts of investment from owners Mark and Sarah Driver, is to combine high-tech equipment with family values and create award-winning sparkling wines that rank alongside the best champagne in years to come. “It would be ideal,” says Richard, “if in about ten years’ time, a restaurant in New York or Beijing has an English wine section on their wine list, divided into counties, and that Rathfinny Sussex Sparkling is treated with equal reverence as Champagne.”

TASTING NOTES:

Armed with the certainty that we wouldn’t be tasting any Malbecs or Merlots, we tried a selection of still English white and rosé wines to see how they compared to classic southern European wines. A good selection, available in mixed cases, is available from www.theenglishvine.co.uk

WOLSTONBURY BACCHUS REICHENSTEINER 2018 £16.99 ABV 12.5% WEST SUSSEX winecellardoor.co.uk

Most of the English whites we sampled veered towards the drier end of the spectrum, for the sweetness of some southern European wines comes from the fruitier grapes produced by their balmier climates. This wine has a very strong Englishness about it, with apricots and elderflower on the nose, and crisp, light, floral notes on the way down. Pale in colour, sleek in bottling and smooth on the palate: the perfect picnic wine.

CRADLE VALLEY ROSÉ 2019 £18.00 ABV 12% EAST SUSSEX rathfinnyestate.com

The rosé made by the Rathfinny Estate from predominantly Pinot Gris grapes is described as ‘ballet slipper pink’ and we would concur. There is a lot of surprising flavour in this discreet offering: notes of wet grass and summer wildflowers on the nose, followed by deeper cuts of cucumber and strawberries on the palate. An aftertaste of gazpacho makes this one to sip while watching a cricket match in white flannels on the village green.

STILL BY HATTINGLEY CHARDONNAY £19.50 ABV 12.6% HAMPSHIRE hattingleyvalley.com

Family-owned winery Hattingley Valley has added its first-ever white wine, made from 100% Chardonnay grapes, to its collection of awardwinning English sparkling wines. The first impression is super dry for a Chardonnay. Hattingley is almost sooty on the nose, with a vibrantly bright acidity and a very pale colour. Green apple flavours kick in on the palate, with a hint of honey and pear. An ideal wine to wash down richly flavoured cheeses.

FOLC 2020 VINTAGE ROSÉ £14.99 ABV 11% KENT drinkfolc.com

A pale salmon pink colour is produced by a blend of Pinot Noir, Pinot Meurnier, Chardonnay, Bacchus, Reichensteiner, Schönburger and Dornfelder grapes. The vineyard, based in Kent, is a family-run affair launched during lockdown in 2020. The palate is clean and crisp with a mineral backbone, with notes of wild strawberries kicking in, balanced by floral notes leaving a long and textured finish. This was the finest of the rosés we sampled, easily sitting comfortably alongside any rosé from southern Europe. The elegantly dimpled bottle is rather sexy too.

NUMBER 1 £12.99 ABV 11% ESSEX theenglishvine.co.uk

The house wine from theenglishvine.co.uk is a pleasant, no-nonsense easy drinker made from Bacchus grapes, created by viticulturalist Peter Morio in 1933. The name, of course, comes from the Roman name for the Greek god of wine Dionysus. Bacchus grapes ripen early, making them ideal for cultivation in England. Our colder climate causes the grapes to retain a higher acidity, producing lower yields. The nearest European equivalent in flavour would be a Sauvignon Blanc.

CHAPEL DOWN ENGLISH ROSÉ £13.99 ABV 12% KENT chapeldown.com

A delicate rosé which epitomises English summer, with aromas of strawberry and cream, made in Tenterden, Kent from grapes sourced from Kent, Sussex and Essex. Chapel Down is a 20-year-old vineyard that recently replaced Bollinger as official partner of the Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race. They are also an official supplier to No.10 Downing Street, but don’t let that put you off. Another easy drinker, with redcurrants and floral notes on the palate leading to a crisp, refreshing finish. n