English wine on auction

Will be released summer 2024. From their own vineyards in East Sussex. Alsace clones. Lots of lees work in the tank.
A lovely, lovely fragrance and a really pretty wine. The fruit is rounded, sweet and ripe (although the wine is bone dry). Lilac blossom, mirabelle, golden apple and raspberry. So much fruit but the finish has this fabulous mineral drawstring nip. (TC)

60% Pinot Noir, 30% Chardonnay, 10% Pinot Noir. Four years sur lattes and one year on cork. Made by Dermot Sugrue.
Walnuts and lemon curd. Bold, angular bubbles, like glittery little crystals in the mouth. Masses of grapefruit and then a mineral underline. Long, firm, sour-cream finish. (TC)

Tasted from magnum. Estate fruit, picked in November. Zero dosage. Disgorged a year ago (so roughly April/May 2023).
Bright, crystal-cut but ripe fruit – golden apples, Conference pears. And then fresh-mint freshness and the crunchy hazelnut. Very, very precise, very clipped but not terse, thanks to that fruit. A very central wine. It holds everything at its core, gathered together in easy balance but with great length. The kind of wine you could have on the table and it will be a comfortable companion to pretty much any food. (TC)

Exacting acidity but the orange and clementine fruit floods every corner of the mouth. There is a lovely gentle walnut nuttiness on the nose and a touch of Brazil-nut richness and creaminess on the palate. This is fabulous. A wine that seems to be getting better and better with age. Long and with a smoky liquorice finish. (TC)

Lots of fruit! Practically laying out a market fruit stall in the glass! Apples and pears. Piles of apples of all colours. Fresh and breezy, and the texture of a white-linen envelope – crisp and cool, folded but no sharp edges, just lovely lines. Brisk but not rapier acidity, and the plenitude of fruit fills out the acidity. An apple orchard of a wine. (TC)

South African winemaker Cara Lee Dely, who previously worked at Môreson and joined Bolney in 2021, confessed to me that she's not a huge fan of Sauvignon Blanc and was a bit taken aback when 2 tonnes of Sauvignon fruit arrived at the winery in early November 2022, when she was least expecting it. What else to do but ferment it? 'But the fruit was beautiful! It smelt beautiful while it was fermenting, so we got together as a team, discussed it, and decided to bottle a varietal, dry Sauvignon.'
And it really has turned out to be a great wine! Vivid, vibrant, electric energy. Mango and kiwi fruit, greengage and lime. It’s crunchy yet round. Has a lovely granite dustiness at the core, and pine and fennel pollen on the end. Complex and damn delicious. Brava, Cara Lee Dely. (TC)

Savoury and tight. Tomato vine and roasted apple pips. Cobnuts and hazelnuts. Pears and thick-cotton texture. A lean wine with vertical acidity but a breezy elegance of fruit. (TC)

52% Chardonnay, rest Pinot Noir and Meunier with 5% Pinot Blanc to round it out. Dosage 7 g/l. 750,000 bottles. Winemaker Josh Donaghay-Spire says this is their sparkling wine specifically made to be light and accessible.
And it is indeed light and accessible. The dosage is well judged – it's pretty, a little floral but not sweet. Fresh and breezy easy. (TC)

Mostly 2018 but a bit of perpetual reserve. 60% Chardonnay, 30% Pinot Noir, 10% Pinot Meunier. Five years sur lattes. Dosage around 7.5 g/l.
Rich, lots of Danish pastry and buttery hazelnuts. Satin texture and tiny, tiny bubbles. It does a rather grand unfurling of flavours in the mouth, sweeping in with a largesse of firm, indulgent, autolytic richness, the broad, rounded fruit carried right to the end. (TC)

100% Chardonnay from the Kit's Coty vineyard in Kent. Picked in half-boxes, pressed and only the heart (hence Coeur) of the run-off is used. The juice goes straight to barrel, 100% spontaneous fermentation, 100% barrel-fermented and aged. 2016 was a difficult, wet vintage until suddenly, at the end of August, the weather changed and gave the vineyards a beautiful, long, warm autumn.
Smoky, spicy and burnished. Sour cherries and quince. A tingle of lemon-peel sherbet. This is really rather special. The acidity is tucked into satin bubbles and wonderful texture. Yuzu pith. Great balance. Long and very good. (TC)

Estate-grown Hampshire fruit on limestone. 100% Pinot Noir. No malo, no oak ageing. Seven years on the lees, bottled 2015, disgorged 2022. Dosage 6 g/l. Winemaker Corinne Seely, viticulturist Fred Langdale.
Crisp toasty nose and then utterly direct and dramatic. Mouth-watering. Apples chiselled out of rock. 3D geometry, like rolling a stone-cut polyhedron in your mouth. And then in the mid palate it blooms into pear and creaminess, filling every corner, before tightening back into a chiselled finish. (TC)

70% Chardonnay, 30% Pinot Noir. Whole-bunch pressed and naturally settled for 24–36 hours. Fermented in stainless steel with a small proportion fermented in oak barrels. Bottled for secondary fermentation in June 2020 under cork (instead of the usual crown cap – hence the name 'agrafe', which is this process) and 38 months sur lattes under cork. Dosage 4.5 g/l.
This is exactly the kind of offbeat wine that makes my heart beat a little faster and makes me smile. It has a grooved dimension that is quite unique in this room of diverse, iconic, distinctive English sparkling wines. It smells of fresh, stone-rolled oats, honey and orange peel. It has the texture of citrus peel: pithy silk and astringency, pitted yet smooth and rounded, grippy yet oily. It's a whorl of roasted oats and candied citrus peel, stollen and marzipan, quince and brusque, punctuated acidity. I tasted this in such a rush and yet it stole my heart. I would love to taste this exciting wine again. My sense is that this is a wine that will really appeal to people who love aged Soave or Verdicchio, or oxidatively made white wines. (TC)

Tasted from magnum.
Undulating, mellow and mellifluous energy from this beautifully evolved Blanc de Blancs. Smoked pears, honey-soaked pear slices and late-summer hay meadow. The acidity has loosened into golden lacework and you can really lean into its gentle grace. (TC)

Tasted from magnum.
Singing with fruit, so much fruit! Despite more than eight years on lees and under cork, the fruit is still broad and picture perfect. Like an orchard on a late July morning. Tastes like summer dawn, when all the colours are brighter and every gulp of air is vivid and crisp and illuminating. (TC)

Tasted from magnum.
Richer, sweeter, deeper, more smoky than its older peers. Notes of honey, grilled lemon, apricots. Sonorous and sine-curve sensuous. There is real amplitude here. Was the dosage higher, I wonder? It doesn't matter because the balance is there and the sweetness adds resonance. It would be beautiful with pithivier or tagines and curries made with dried fruit. (TC)

Roughly 65% Chardonnay, 35% Pinot Noir. 80 months sur lattes.
SO fragrant! Smells like lemon peel – exactly like the fine spray of citrus oil in the air as you slice the finest of tissue-fine peel off a lemon. And it tastes like honey and stones. Hawthorne blossom. Honeysuckle. Graphite. As with many of these English wines which spend a long time sur lattes, it's needed an equally long time under cork to come through. And now it's beautiful, and extraordinarily long. The rewards of time. (TC)

67% Chardonnay, 33% Pinot Noir.
Not as outrageously fragrant as the 2014 – more introvert. But also a beauty. Kumquat and guava. Shimmering acidity. Mouth-filling, every tiny corner. It was with much regret that I had to taste this wine in undignified haste. (TC)

8% barrel fermentation with a little bit of malo. 7 years on lees. Disgorged September last year. Dosage 6 g/l.
Dramatically smoky. Minute bubbles and crunchy crystalline acidity give the textural impression of finely embroidered beaded fabric. Beautiful liquorice notes set into the fruit and into a long, nutty finish. (TC)

This was the first wine they made – it's now a blend of reserve wines but back in 2010 they didn’t have any reserve wines. The tanks were going up as the grapes were coming in. From their vineyard in Hampshire – a blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Two years sur lattes and then a long time on cork.
Such a treat to taste Hattingley's first wine ever and an English fizz with so much post-disgorgment bottle age. And it really is a revelation (confirming an opinion I've been slowly forming for a long time, that English wines, sparkling and still, age for much longer than most of us assume). Lemon curd, lime marmalade, tamarind and pecan and cashew. Lots of layers, complexity and lots of zing. The bubbles might be sparse but the acidity has held it together and it's acquired a delicious, tangy burnish. Still very, very alive! (TC)

Another bottle from Hattingley's first year making wine. They had a little bit of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Meunier left over after selecting the juice for the Classic Cuvée so it all went into a single four-year-old burgundy barrel where it was fermented and then aged for eight months on lees. It spent 24 months sur lattes and was disgorged in 2013. 10 years on cork.
Golden and smells like a tray of granola just out the oven. This is gorgeous. Very intense citrus, but with a roasted, savoury patina. Honey and masses of bitter orange. Very intense. Very concentrated. Very compact and, surprisingly, lots of bubbles. Deeply etched with toasty spices. Bottle age has clearly rewarded this wine that was hard work in its youth. (TC)

Chardonnay from the top of the slope in the centre-corner parcel of their concave, forest-wrapped vineyard. Planted in 2014. Fermented and aged in barrel for four months before spending 36 months on lees. Dosage 5 g/l.
Intense and vivid, the determined focus of the acidity cutting relief into rich flavours. Lemon marmalade, marzipan, cherry stone and cherries. Vibrating with coruscating energy. Blazing with ambition and yet finely wrought detail. (TC)

100% Pinot Noir from a single hillside parcel planted on chalk in 2014. Picked in late October. Full malolactic fermentation, fermented and aged in stainless steel, 30 months sur lattes.
This is pretty complex. Mint and black pepper, yellow cherry and kumquat. Beautiful shimmer of acidity, really vinous. Long ribbons of flavour and texture, sinuous and sensuous, and yet the acidity is staccato and prancing. Citrus to stone. Stone fruit to salt. And so much energy! (TC)

100% single-parcel Pinot Noir. Only free-run from maceration was used. Vinified in oak barrels, no malo, unfiltered, unfined. Aged for 30 months on lees.
Spicy, peppery, defiant. In some ways it reminds me of Lake Garda's Chiarettos, only with the chirography of oak. Chipotle, rose hip and hibiscus sign the top notes. Sour cherries in the middle. So much pepper, so much fruit. Mouth-filling and thrilling. (TC)

Aromas that hint at almond blossom, but the wine is packed with citrus right across the spectrum. Salty, fragrant and racy elegance. (TC)

Poured too cold (all the Rathfinny wines at this tasting were a bit too cold). But even the temperature of the wine couldn't hide how powerful and broad it is. An earthy undertow, over which layers of praline, oranges and steel-cut apples. Fine, fine mousse and hawthorn blossom scattered on the end. Steely and then mouth-watering. (TC)

Tasted from magnum. Disgorged October 2023, so 12 or 13 years sur lattes! Dosage 8 g/l.
This long-aged wine is a very interesting, unusual sparkling. It genuinely smelt like melted cheese and apricot jam on toast at first! Smoky, smoky umami flavours layered with dried stone fruit, sweetness but also underlying green notes. It's not as good as the Hattingley 2010s, but I think this is a lot to do with the fact that it has only recently been disgorged relative to time sur lattes – a helluva shock for a wine that's spent so much time on lees in bottle. This probably needs at the very least another year under cork to give it time to resolve and show its best. (TC)

100% Chardonnay from 2015, 2106, 2017 – all Sussex estate fruit, all fermented and aged for three years in new oak barrels. Dosage 8 g/l.
Strikingly unusual! Oak and lees, secondary bottle fermentation and age have somehow resulted in a wine so smoky and umami and yet meatily sweet that it smells of bacon and pork fat. And a wine that tastes of jamón ibérico and toasted-sesame-seed oil. Salt-preserved citrus. Very broad, very firm – very firm. Super-bold! Dramatic. Not a sipping sparkling. This is most definitely a wine for food, ideally hearty, big-flavour food. You could easily have it with goulash or asado de puerco (Mexican pork stew) or sopa de lentejas (Spanish lentils with chorizo and pork). (TC)

Creamy (very creamy), smooth, swirling and elegant. Pear-Tatin richness but the acidity is brisk and clean with gritty, honeyed spiciness. Long and 3D. And very very yum. Liquorice laces looping through the bubbles. I'd love to have had a little more time to taste this wine, but I was rushing to get the tasting done before they packed up. (TC)

Tasted from magnum.
(NB I literally tasted the last warm drop in the bottle as everything else had been packed up around me, and I was tasting in a rush, so this terse tasting note may not reflect the wine.) Smells quite green, like crushed sorrel. Clean, broad, plain, smart. (TC)