The 35 sparkling wines below were all tasted blind in January of this year as part of a Master of Wine dissertation. I don’t know what the thrust of the dissertation is but the advantage was that after the tasting its author Sara Muirhead provided all of us tasters with lots of background information which usefully illustrates the habits of English winemakers today.
Note for example the wide variation in grape varieties used. Some producers are reliant on the early-ripening German crossings and the neutral-tasting hybrid Seyval Blanc that underpinned the original 20th-century English wine industry. Others...