Where Does English Wine Stand Today?
Once a skeptic, Tom Stevenson has come to love his home country's dramatically improved wines.
There was a time when I certainly considered all English wine to be a joke—and a pretty poor one at that. I used to be embarrassed, but thanks to the viticultural revolution sparked off by Stuart and Sandy Moss, I am now very proud of what this country can produce. The Mosses were, of course, Nyetimber’s original American owners. Not original owners in a historical sense; that would have been long before Henry VIII gifted this ancient manor to Anne of Cleves as part of her annulment settlement.
Before even its earliest mention in the Domesday Book of 1086. No, I refer to the Mosses as the original owners in a viticultural sense—the first owners to plant a vineyard on the estate and, in doing so, ignoring all local warnings that Chardonnay and Pinot Noir would rot before they ripened. And look where we are now.
We should not forget Kit Lindlar, who made the first wine, Nyetimber Blanc de Blancs 1992, at his High Wealds winery. This groundbreaking wine received so much astonished praise in the wine press that it was selected for Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Anniversary Lunch in 1997. After winemaking, Kit took to the cloth, making him quite literally the father of English sparkling wine.
In the first edition of Christie’s World Encyclopedia of Champagne & Sparkling Wine (1998), I included an entry on Nyetimber, but there was no getting away from the fact that the quality of almost every other wine produced in this country was really quite embarrassing. Wines were made either from crosses or hybrids—crosses such as Müller-Thurgau, Reichensteiner, and Huxelrebe, grapes that are now so unfashionable that they are rarely grown in their own country or in a state of inevitable decline; while hybrid varieties were grown, so we were told, because nothing else could—a falsehood so eloquently exposed by the Mosses.
By the second edition (2003), English sparkling wine had achieved “world-class potential”—it happened as fast as that. Nyetimber was facing a competitor, Ridgeview, which was snapping at its heels at every turn. Ridgeview owner Mike Roberts had helped pick one of Nyetimber’s earliest harvests, and it was this experience that convinced him to start a vineyard and plant what was at the time the second-largest acreage of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Meunier vines.
Nyetimber and Ridgeview both launched their products to much acclaim, enjoying success everywhere—from Michelin-starred restaurants, to supermarkets. This did not go unnoticed as entrepreneurs and their fellow investors began buying up land and planting it exclusively with the three classic Champagne grape varieties that not so long ago no one would dare to grow in this country. Having to wait three years for the first crop, then another three years for the first sparkling wines to be disgorged, it was more of an evolution than a revolution, and of course not all the wines launched hit the quality their owners aspired to. But as new labels began to trickle onto the market, so it became apparent that all the best and most exciting wines were coming from the new kids on the block, not the brands that dated back prior to Nyetimber (unless replanted with classic Champagne varieties).
By 2014, English sparkling wine was so cool it was hot. Other sparkling-wine regions could not understand how English wine had gone from being the laughingstock of Europe to laughing all the way to bank, with prices higher than some Champagnes. I was asked by Maurizio Zanella of Ca’ del Bosco to put on a tasting for his fellow producers. He wanted me to explain how English sparkling wine had managed to achieve a level of fame that Franciacorta had already been chasing for decades. My presentation kicked off with a track by The Beatles—“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”—as I told everyone that I was taking them on an acid trip.
That acid is part of what English sparkling wine is; and while much positive work has been done to curb it in the vineyard and winery, that bright natural acidity should be embraced, not neutralized, if its sparkling wines are to sustain its identity and fortune.
Still English wine starting to steal hearts
Until as recently as the latest editions of and Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia (2020), my mantra to English wine producers in that book was to uproot all hybrids and crosses and focus exclusively on the one world-class wine this country has to offer: traditional method sparkling wine. But I now admit it’s no longer quite so simple.
Recently, some of the still wines from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir have started to show exciting potential. It hasn’t been easy. Initially, the climate did not seem warm enough to ripen vinifera grapes sufficiently for non-sparkling red and white wines—but it was not that long ago that the climate did not seem warm enough to ripen classic sparkling-wine grapes either, until the Mosses proved otherwise.
The one thing that everyone can agree on, though, is the extreme variability of the quality and quantity of English vintages, but it is evident that the learning curve for classic still wines has been much steeper and longer than it has for classic sparkling wine.
Even for established top-tier English still-wine producers like Gusbourne, there have been some disappointments—such as Boot Hill Pinot Noir 2019, which now shows more oak than fruit, and the fruit that remains is thin and astringent, with little more than tart cherries to show for it. Nevertheless, it is just a glitch in the mostly smooth progress of one of the UK’s most consistent wine producers, whereas every single still wine made by a number of other wineries has been so bad and fault ridden that I dare not mention their names.
Between these two extremes, the bulk of still English wines are simply dull and uninspiring, the sort of hopeless fodder that has fed my Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia mantra. However, the exciting still wines are beginning to spread, while the bulk of dullards are gradually- very gradually- starting to shrink. And perhaps, just perhaps, I should be encouraging those who really want to produce classy reds and whites to do just that.
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