Organic English Sparkling Wines Tasting

In part because I've been taking a viticulture course, which in the last session covered sustainable vinegrowing, I've been keen to try some organic English sparkling wines. This is still a relatively niche segment of the English sparkling wine industry, with the five producers represented in this tasting lineup probably constituting over half of all organic ESW output in England at present. However, the sense I get from the other attendees of my viticulture course is that many of those in the process of establishing an English vineyard, or looking to in the near future, have at least some sympathy with this cause, and I'm sure this trend will continue to grow.

Organic viticulture does seem to be a somewhat contentious issue within the industry. Growing grapes for winemaking is fraught with so many difficulties that it is understandable why so many producers choose the comparative "easy life" of the conventional approach. Which still isn't particularly easy.

A common misconception about organic farming is that it means no spraying whatsoever. This typically is not the case, and organic viticulture will still make use of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides, but only those products approved by the Soil Association, and within the proscribed limits.

Perhaps the most noteworthy of sprays used in conventional viticulture is the herbicide (aka weedkiller) glyphosate - most commonly known by its brand name Roundup. This is not approved for organic agriculture, and looks as though its days may be numbered in conventional agriculture as well (with France having pledged to ban it by 2021, although they have subsequently backed down on that somewhat). However, apparently it is by far the most effective way of controlling weeds in a vineyard, and many viticulturists are quite concerned about the alternatives should a ban one day come into force.

One point that stuck in my mind from the viticulture course is that the native wild plants are typically much better adapted to local growing conditions than the foreign species - the vines - you're introducing. These weeds will compete for resources with the vines, and without some kind of human intervention the weeds will ultimately win. Alternatives to conventional herbicides are often labour intensive and may only be partly effective. This area presents an ongoing challenge. It's not clear that organic practice has all the answers here but it is encouraging to know there is at least one proven model which does not rely on a herbicide which may not be around much longer.

Two of the producers in the lineup (Sedlescombe and Albury) go further and also adhere to biodynamic practice, which can be considered a superset of organic viticulture. We had covered this briefly in the last session of the viticulture course. There are facets of it, such as burying a cow horn filled with manure, and a strict adherence to phases of the moon, which one might be forgiven for considering more the domain of a religion than a science! That said, it has fairly widespread adoption in parts of France and elsewhere in the world, and it is hard to imagine with all the trials and tribulations viticulturists face that they would willingly make their lives more difficult if they didn't believe there was some tangible benefit in it.

So, on to the tasting! In addition to some of my usual London wine drinking chums, this time we had a special guest attendee: John Mobbs, founder of the excellent Great British Wine site. It was a pleasure to have someone so knowledgeable - and with such a good nose - there to discuss the wines with. Hopefully he'll be writing up his tasting notes from the session as I'm sure they'll be a lot more insightful than mine!

Forty Hall Vineyard Brut 2015
Pinot Noir 55%, Chardonnay 40% and Pinot Meunier 5%

Fascinatingly this is a vineyard in Enfield, North London, inside the M25, so the grapes were grown only 10 miles or so away from where the tasting was held. The winemaking takes place at Davenport in East Sussex.

This initially struck me as more Chardonnay forward than the percentages above suggest - with light buttery notes on the nose, but then the red fruit that you'd expect in line with the Pinot dominance coming later on the palate. The group consensus on this was that it was more of an aperitif wine (again possibly suggesting the Chardonnay had come to the fore here).

Sedlescombe Premier Brut 2014
Seyval Blanc 43%, Pinot Noir 25%, Orion 26%

(Yes those don't add up to 100% - is there something else in there?)

East Sussex, near Robertsbridge.

I was very keen to try another Seyval Blanc dominated English sparkling wine, being a great fan of Breaky Bottom, where in addition to 100% Seyval Blanc wines Peter also makes cuvées like the 2013 "Cornelis Hendriksen" which is a blend of classic Champagne varieties and Seyval. I thought perhaps this might be something along those lines, but was quite different. The nose had a light floral character, which slightly less generously some of us described as "soapy" - a trait sometimes associated with Seyval, although John Mobbs suggests these floral notes could be a result of biodynamic viticulture. This was quite a different wine from the others in this lineup, and perhaps for being the outlier in style it didn't fare well in this group. Probably deserves to be revisited in isolation.

Davenport Limney Estate 2013 
45% Auxerrois, 30% chardonnay, 17% meunier, 8% pinot noir
East Sussex, near Rotherfield. 

Will Davenport seems to be highly regarded in English wine circles, and given that he is also the winemaker for Forty Hall, above, has his handiwork represented twice in this lineup. At the time of tasting, we did not know the percentages in the blend, and this seemed very Chardonnay dominant, with very rich buttery notes on the nose, which carried through to an almost unctuous quality. I think this has really benefited from having a bit more age than the others in this lineup. Interesting to see Auxerrois featured here, which we later discovered is actually the highest percentage grape in this wine. It apparently has the same parentage as Chardonnay, so perhaps I could be forgiven (in addition to Chardonnay being the second highest percentage) for considering this to be Chardonnay dominant. To quote Will Davenport on Twitter:

"For me Auxerrois ripens earlier with softer acidity than chardonnay. The flavour is more peach/honey and less apple/citrus. Sort of half way between chardonnay and pinot blanc. Definitely a high quality variety & very useful blending option in the higher acid vintages."

Albury Estate Classic Cuvee 2015
Pinot Noir 52.5%, Pinot Meunier 28.5%, Chardonnay 19%
(Taken from here where the percentages add up to more than 100%! I suspect that should actually read Chardonnay 19%)
North Downs, near Guildford.

I have to admit to having not paid sufficient attention at this stage of the tasting, I'd been deep in conversation with John Mobbs, and a couple of the other guests had arrived part way through, so the tasting had become quite staggered, with different people on different wines. Red fruits as you'd expect from a Pinot dominant wine, and interestingly a very similar assemblage (and the same vintage) as the Oxney below, but this seemed a lot more fruity, presumably as a result of the differing levels of dosage: this has a residual sugar of 10.5 g/l, putting it in regular brut territory in Champagne terms. This was one of John's two favourites of the tasting, and I think it deserves to be revisited when I can give it my full attention!

Oxney Classic 2015
Pinot Noir 51%, Pinot Meunier 29%, Chardonnay 20%
East Sussex, near Rye

Relatively low dosage (5 g/l) which would make this an extra brut in Champagne terms. Correspondingly the fruit was more restrained, and this to me was characterised by a sharp minerality which bordered almost on the metallic (although that may have been a subliminal message conveyed by the rather smart looking foil around the neck!). I've really enjoyed low (or zero) dosage Champagnes, and would love to see more wines like this coming from England. It can be a bit more challenging here given acidity levels, and it's a fine line to walk between the sort of crisp, dry minerality of a fine brut nature from Champagne (Veuve Fourny do a particularly fine example) and the overwhelming acidity that some English sparkling wines unfortunately succumb to.

We did the tasting al fresco, given the unseasonably warm weather over the Easter weekend, in Primrose Hill in London. Consequently chilling the wines was a bit of a challenge, and I did my best with a couple of ice buckets. Possibly some of the first pours were a tad too warm (hard to keep the wine in the top of the neck cool with an ice bucket in the sun!), but both John and I revisited most of the wines later on, from further down the bottle where the chilling was more effective. So I think on balance we probably got there.