Davenport Diamond Fields Pinot Noir

 

Today I received a case of the newly released 2019 vintage of what has to be my favourite still English Wine: Davenport's Diamond Fields Pinot Noir, which I had eagerly bought within minutes of receiving the email announcing its release.

While sparkling wine has clearly been the flagship of the English wine revolution of recent years, as Chris Foss asked at the Plumpton College viticulture course I attended in 2018/2019: "How many of you drink sparkling wine every day?". As much as I love ESW (or should I say GBCM?) even I couldn't say in all honesty it's something I drink every day (although I probably do average once a week at least...).

Still wines are the mainstay of wine consumption globally, and there is hope amongst some that the confidence England has gained as a wine producing region from its world class sparkling wines can be translated into still wines which can also compete on the global stage. I had reserved judgement on this initially, happy enough that England produced such great fizz, and over the past few years had just occasionally tried the odd still English wine here and there, mainly out of curiosity. There were certainly wines that were interesting, others that showed a promising direction, and let's be honest, quite a lot that were really not to my taste. However still English wines remained largely in this "interesting" category - and generally no individual wine gave me a strong compulsion to buy the same thing again - until I tried Davenport's Diamond Fields Pinot Noir.

I was alerted to it in June 2019 by the BOOM awards, having already discovered some of Davenport's sparkling wines at an organic ESW tasting I'd organised earlier that year. That was the 2017 vintage, and I was immediately struck by the purity, freshness, and superb fruit expression - characteristics I had also noticed in the Forty Hall Brut, another wine made by Will Davenport which had become a firm favourite that summer.

On a bit of a whim I had ordered a whole case of Diamond Fields, despite having never tried it before - and didn't regret it. On many occasions when musing over which wine might best suit a particular meal or a particular mood I found myself coming back to it.

As a couple of odd asides, it seems notably less hangover inducing than other wine at the same ABV! I assume this has something to do with organic / minimal intervention viticulture and winemaking. Even the labels seemed to be very natural. I occasionally leave empty bottles out in the garden, and noticed snails would come along and eat the labels off the Davenport bottles, but leave the others untouched.

On to the 2018 vintage (released autumn 2019?), and a very consistent style with the 2017, perhaps a little more intense and concentrated after that record breaking summer of 2018 but still very fruit driven, very clean and pure, and overall still a joy to drink. Possibly a slightly higher outturn, but it still sold out before the subsequent vintage was released. My most memorable bottle of it had to be in July 2020, when I finally got back to Sussex after being mostly forced to stay home for the previous six months, as many of us were. I sat atop Ditchling Beacon and enjoyed it while watching the sunset. It was glorious.

Finally we get to the 2019 vintage, which I tried for the first time this evening as I was writing this article. I had been slightly apprehensive that after the abundance of 2018 it might seem a little restrained by comparison, but my fears were allayed instantly on first nosing - a wealth of Pinot-esque fruit character - cherries and blackberries to the fore - and wonderfully fresh and vibrant. At barely a year old it obviously tastes really youthful but it's so enjoyable like that. Oddly one of my first thoughts on hearing about the release of the 2019 vintage was that it would remove the temptation to finish the last couple of bottles of 2018 I had, so they could get a chance to age... but I wonder now if we're too hung up on the idea of aging Pinot Noir? This particular example is joyous as is.

I took the opportunity to ask Will and the team at Davenport a few questions about the Diamond Fields vineyard and the winemaking process. Mostly Will's words below, just slightly edited by me:

We first set out to make a still Pinot Noir back in 2000, planting 2 acres on a site at Horsmonden in Kent. However it wasn't until 2010 that the site was established organically and produced its first crop. 2014 was the first commercial vintage. The site is very sheltered, south facing and a heat trap, so we hoped to make a red wine at least most years. The vines are trained as double Guyot, yields are kept very low.

The grapes achieve 12% alcohol most years without need for chaptalisation and that is our target ripeness. In the winery we do as little as possible which makes it even more important to have perfect fruit. No yeast, fining, filtration, and only very minimal sulphur dioxide at bottling (none before then). Because the grapes are ripe we don’t need to ferment too long on the skins which can make the wines taste dried out. It goes straight from the press to barriques (between 6 and 20 year old wood). We're not looking for any oak flavour but the oak ageing softens the wine out and removes the harsh angles.

Diamond Fields sells out most years in under 6 months as we only make around 2500 bottles. We planted an additional 4 acres of Pinot Noir in 2016 and so these are just starting to crop. The site is similar but the wines that we’ve made so far are slightly different, sandier soils, so I haven’t decided yet whether we will produce a 2nd Pinot Noir single vineyard wine, or blend them together. We’ll probably end up keeping some of the best barrels out for a single vineyard and then blending the rest. We have a 2019 Pinot Noir from the new site in a single barrel at the moment so we can see how it turns out.

So there you have it. I think this is a beautiful wine, something I keep wanting to come back to, with really consistent quality across three very different vintages.