FABULOUS FIZZ

Rathfinny

Once a working farm, the Rathfinny Wine Estate planted their first vines in 2012. The vineyard now encompasses more than 230 acres of primarily Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Pinot Meunier in the South Downs National Park. The sparkling wines are matured in the bottle for at least 30 months, allowing the complex flavours to flourish. rathfinnyestate.com

Bee Corp Beesou

Set to be the new drink of the season, Beesou is the first B Corp aperitif blended with honey from the Cotswolds and is on a mission to help save the bees with 10% of all profits going directly to Bees for Development charity.

The luxury unique blend contains complex notes of cinchona bark and chinotto which give way to a burst of bitter orange and pink grapefruit that rounds into the mellow sweetness of raw honey. beesou.london

Spotlight

Le Cratère

An organic sparkling rosé grown inside a metorite crater

By EVE HERBERT

Haut-Languedoc fine wine producers, Domaine du Météore, have recently discovered that grapes grown in their vineyard, the only vineyard in the world known to be inside a meteorite crater, take their minerality from nano-diamonds created by the impact of a meteor that fell to earth over 10,000 years ago.

The recently launched pale rosé sparkling wine, Le Cratère, captures the essence of wines from another dimension. Le Cratère is an organic ‘methode champenoise’ sparkling rosé wine made in limited quantities (970 bottles) from Syrah grapes, which are all grown inside the 200 metre-wide meteorite crater from which Domaine du Météore takes its name.

Nano-diamonds were formed when the meteorite crashed into the ground with a force equivalent to that of an atomic bomb. Nanodiamonds are found in tiny spherules of the meteorite iron and nickel that can only just be seen by the naked eye and which are present in abundance in the soil in and around the meteorite crater.

Owners, Dr Paul Jenkins and Dr Paul Jarman, say: "The distinctive minerality found in the wines, due to the schist soil and high altitude, helped, by a little cosmic space dust from the meteorite, brings an elegance to our wines."

Le Cratère RRP: £28 per bottle. £33 per bottle with wooden bird box. £168 for case of 6. ABV: 13% UK delivery: £5.00 for a bottle; £15 a case domainedumeteore.com