Ridgeview Vineyard Visit

On arrival at Ridgeview, it is immediately apparent where the name comes from. I walked from Wivelsfield station (Burgess Hill station is a bit closer, but the train I was on wasn't stopping there) and approaching from the north like this there is the urban sprawl of Burgess Hill almost all the way to the vineyard. However, look south from the winery and you do indeed get a lovely view of the ridge of the South Downs - most prominently Ditchling Beacon - across the vineyard and beyond, to to open countryside from there to the hills. They've wisely capitalised on this in the tasting room.

Miriam, who was presiding over the tasting room when I visited, said that the founder Mike Roberts had a similar revelation when he first saw the site, and the name came very naturally.

My visit to Ridgeview was a slightly impromptu one, so I hadn't booked on a tour, but the tasting room is open for a few hours each day for exactly these sorts of impromptu visits. A couple of other visitors had arrived at the same time as I did, and we were greeted with a taster of Ridgeview's Bloomsbury, which Miriam described as their signature wine. I've been really enjoying this recently (partly spurred on by Waitrose recently having had it on special offer - at £21.49 it had seemed like an absolute bargain). Apparently an explicit goal of this particular cuvee is to make a consistent product year on year - which is no mean feat, particularly given the extreme variability in English vine harvests. This seems like an obvious objective for an NV wine - to maintain a familiar style over time - but I've never heard it stated by an English sparkling winemaker before, and certainly Nyetimber's Classic Cuvee, as a counterpoint, does seem to differ from one release to the next, within some reasonable parameters of the house style. Their Bloomsbury is more Chardonnay dominant, as opposed to their other regular white NV offering (Cavendish) which is more Pinot dominant.

The vineyard adjoining the winery is something like 16 acres, and Ridgeview rely on two other suppliers for their grapes - one being Tinwood, near Chichester, bringing their total supply to somewhere in the region of 100 acres.

Whilst there I also tried their 2014 Blanc de Noirs, which, as you might expect, in contrast to the citrus notes of the Bloomsbury, has a more red berry fruit character, and Miriam also suggested a hint of liquorice.

Finally I had a sip from the end of a bottle of their Blanc de Blancs 2009, which I was forewarned had probably been open a bit too long and had lost its fizz, but still retained wonderfully rich butter notes on the nose, and gave the impression of having aged really nicely. I bought a bottle of the previous year's BdB to take away, from their "archive collection", and hope that will offer something similarly rich.

Even as a casual visitor without having booked onto a tour their were some interesting glimpses of the winery to be had, including a large window just outside the tasting room, where a riddling machine could be seen in the foreground, with fermentation tanks beyond.

It seems Ridgeview are currently expanding on the winery side of things, with a large building project in a neighbouring field, which I'm told will be a new cellar the size of a football pitch, with, if I recall correct, a second winery to be added on top.

I took a quick look at the vines before leaving the site, it seems they're around bud burst. Of course summer would have made for a more picturesque time to visit the vineyard, but I think there is something quite special about this time when vines start to wake again after the winter dormancy.

Like many vineyards around the country there are bougies in the lanes (those white buckets you can see below), ready for overnight frost watch, as the young buds are particularly vulnerable to frosts at this time. Fingers crossed all goes well over the next few weeks, until about mid May when the vineyard team can start to relax!