Alice Kendall

A Vineyard Diary Part 13

To ease our clients through further pandemic chaos Coates & Seely are curating a hamper of Christmas food and goods from local Hampshire producers.

Vineyards and Coronavirus

The story so far: after a small but perfect harvest, pandemic chaos strikes again and we enter another lockdown…

Lockdown strikes again and we have re-occupied our positions on Albion – the perfect socially-distanced pandemic-proof office.

It’s sometimes a little nippy, but nothing that long-johns and a hint of vintage fur can’t cope with.

Sales have flat-lined once more as our wonderful clients – hotels, restaurants, pubs and events companies – struggle themselves to deal with the devastation that lockdown creates for them.

We are truly all in this together…

Meanwhile, one of our corporate customers has placed an order for bottles of Coates & Seely to be sent to their clients and has asked us to curate a Christmas hamper of locally produced food and goods around them.

The variety and quality of the produce we have on our doorstep in Hampshire (with the occasional foray into Somerset) is astonishing.

From hand-made Christmas puddings, dressed in calico, made to an original nineteenth century family recipe (Plum Duff & Stuff), to mince pies with home-made mincemeat of pear, walnut and brandy, and delicate sweet pastry (Mrs B’s Kitchen); from Christmas pudding flavoured fudge that literally melts in the mouth (it melts hearts, too) (Marsden’s Confectionery), to chilli, sweet and smoked flavoured almonds and cashews for your Christmas day ‘quarantinis’ (Cambrook Extraordinary Nuts) and mature cheddars made from an ancient recipe and a single family herd of 320 organic dairy cows (Godminster).

And, whilst not exactly edible, you will probably be tempted to eat, when you first experience their delicious scent, Mariana’s home-made soaps of lavender, lemongrass and sweet orange, hand-wrapped by Mariana herself and which, like your bath, will provide the perfect ending to even the most trying of days.

What each of these – and the many other local producers we work with – all share is an artisanal approach to production, using the highest quality craftsmanship, the best and most ethically sourced ingredients, recyclable packaging and rurally-based production facilities, within a family environment.

The artisans are the great sanctuary of quality, the family the last stronghold of happiness. When they disappear, and the big brands take over, all will be lost.

If you are interested in any of these products, or in our Christmas hamper, do please click on the above links or respond directly to us if you’d like to order any of our sparkling wines which will produce the fizz and the sparkle we must all surely deserve after the trials of this rather extraordinary year!

How English sparkling wine became chic-er than Champagne

BY JONATHAN RAY

“ When is Champagne not Champagne? When it’s English, of course. A luxury English Champagne rival. As Nyetimber releases the most expensive English sparkling wine to date at £150 for its 2009 vintage and £175 for its 2010 sparkling rosé, Jonathan Ray explores the surprising rise of top-quality bubbly from Blighty and suggests a few of the best alternatives to Champagne…

During a long and very enjoyable interval on Glyndebourne’s sun-dappled lawn, my hosts and I tuck into home-made smoked salmon terrine on a bed of watercress, washed down with an exceptional bottle of well-chilled fizz. “What an evening,” sighs my neighbour. “What a wonderful opera, a fabulous picnic and a glorious Champagne!”

Amen to all that. Except, of course, it isn’t Champagne: it’s a bottle of Ambriel Blanc de Noirs from Redfold Vineyards, set deep in the rolling downland of West Sussex. Made from 100 per cent pinot noir and grown in the shadow of Chanctonbury Ring’s fabled Iron-Age fort, this is a wonderful wine, aged for three years on the lees before being disgorged.

It’s toasty and honeyed with subtle hints of lemon ’n’ lime and just a touch of white peach: utterly delicious and as good a fizz as you’ll find for £29.50 a pop. The front label has nothing but seven words on it: Ambriel Blanc de Noirs, Product of England. ’Nuff said, for the fact is that English sparkling wine is now taken very seriously indeed. What was once infra dig is now de rigueur.

English sparkling wine is now a respected global player

There are more than 300 wineries in the UK today, drawing on fruit from 470 vineyards stretching from Kent to Cornwall and Norfolk to North Wales. A couple of vineyards are even to be found in Yorkshire. In total these produced almost 4.45 million bottles of still and sparkling wine last year.

Vineyard acreage has increased by 140 per cent in the last 10 years to almost 2,275 hectares, most now used to grow the three traditional Champagne grape varieties of chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier. Two-thirds of English wine is sparkling and about three million bottles of it is produced, more than all the sparkling wine imported from the US, New Zealand, Chile, South Africa and Argentina put together. There is no doubt that quality sparkling wine is where England’s future lies.

Bizarre as it might sound, it is a US couple, Stuart and Sandy Moss, who should be thanked for much of this. Stuart, a manufacturer of medical and dental equipment in Chicago, and Sandy, an antique dealer and archaeologist, founded the Nyetimber wine estate near Pulborough in Sussex, in their retirement. They realised that the soil and climate there were almost identical to those of Champagne and decided both to plant the classic Champagne varieties (rather than the Germanic hybrids then favoured by many winemakers) and to make their wines in the Champagne method with a secondary fermentation in the bottle.

Luxury English Champagne

Ambriel Blanc de Noirs; Nyetimber Classic Cuvée, Herbert Hall Brut Rosé

There have been other trailblazers, but Nyetimber has done more than most to put English sparkling wine on the map. Its first vintage in 1992 stunned the critics with its dazzling quality, and famously came top of a blind tasting of sparkling wines and Champagnes in Paris. Current owner Eric Heerema has taken the Nyetimber to new heights.

There is, by the way, an important distinction between English and British wine. English (or Welsh) wine is made in the UK from fresh grapes grown in England (or Wales); British wine is unspeakable muck made in the UK from imported grapes or grape concentrate. It is best avoided.

In the past 20 years, England has won 12 international trophies for best sparkling wine in top global competitions, more than any other country, including France. Not bad, eh? Nicholas Hall of Herbert Hall vineyards in Marden, Kent, puts this down to several factors: better growing conditions (it’s as warm in south east England as it was in Champagne 20-plus years ago), greater investment, a crop of talented young winemakers (thanks largely to the excellent winemaking courses at Plumpton College in Sussex), better label and bottle design and the support of a new generation of top sommeliers, keen to list English fizz.

“Ultimately, though, it’s all about quality,” says Hall. “And I fervently believe that England has the potential to be internationally renowned as the embodiment of cool-climate winemaking excellence.”

Coates & Seely Rosé; Ridgeview sparkling wine; Chapel Down Vintage Reserve Brut

Christian Seely agrees. Seely’s day job is MD of AXA Millésimes, the vineyard-owning arm of AXA Insurance, where he oversees such tip-top estates as Quinta do Noval in one of the best wine regions to visit by luxury yacht, Portugal’s Douro Valley, Château Pichon Longueville in Pauillac, Bordeaux region and Château Suduiraut near Sauternes. And yet the only place Seely wanted to plant his own vines was in England, specifically Hampshire. He did so with his friend Nicholas Coates and their Coates & Seely wines are now stocked in the UK’s finest merchants, restaurants and hotels. They are even stocked in the George V and Hotel Le Bristol in Paris, which must say something about their quality, not to mention the discerning judgment of the Parisians.

“In southern England we have sites that have the geological make-up necessary to make great wines,” says Seely. “I truly believe it is possible to make sparkling wines in England that can rival the best the rest of the world has to offer. And I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

Nor would Wendy Outhwaite – producer, with husband Charles, of that Ambriel – be here. Wendy gave up a hugely successful career at the Bar to make English wine. “We were not interested in doing a knock-off ‘sham-pagne’, but in doing something distinctively English and excellent in its own right,” she says. “All the wines from our first harvest have won international medals and people seem to love them. There’s no doubt it’s a dynamic and exciting time to be making English sparkling wine.”

It’s an exciting time to be drinking it too. As I knock back the last of my Ambriel, I glance at the next table and see there a couple of bottles of Ridgeview, whose vines are a mere cork-pop from here. Nearby I notice, too, a bottle of Nyetimber in an ice bucket. English sparkling wine: out and proud. “

Searching for a luxury English fizz to rival Champagne?

Whilst Champagne is commonly used as a catch-all term for Luxury Sparkling wine, the term Champagne is protected under appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) or designation of origin and refers only to French Sparkling Wine from the Champagne region of France. Champagne is made in accordance with Champagne viticultural regulations based on traditional growing techniques that promote quality. So when searching for English Champagne the term most commonly used by the English winemakers is English Sparkling Wine. The best of which will be made, like champagne, using the traditional method with a second fermentation in bottle.

Although English Sparkling Wine is a relative newcomer when you think how long the great vineyards in Europe have been producing wine the quality of English wines is already excellent. As stated in a recent luxury magazine article on the rise of English Sparkling “Step aside, champagne—English sparkling wine can rival the best in the world, with its distinctive terroir and character impressing critics and connoisseurs”.

At Coates & Seely the philosophy on winemaking has always been to produce a terroir wine which is an ultimate expression of the chalky slopes of the Hampshire vineyard.

English Sparkling trumps Champagne at competitions and tastings

English Sparkling Wine can now often be seen beating other bottle fermented sparkling wines from around the world see for example Coates & Seely’s award winning 2009 Vintage ‘La Perfide’ at the IWSC 2019.

So too, in blind tasting competitions an English Sparkling Wine may now beat a French Champagne.

Vintage champagnes are made from the highest selection of the ripest and smallest yields grown on the best sites and only from exceptional quality harvests.

The world class sparkling wine from English wine producers like Coates & Seely comes from deliberately aiming for the lower – but essentially – better quality yields. Coates & Seely are able to achieve the same kind of equilibrium of ripeness and acidity that one might find for example in Champagne but in order to do so we work on a much smaller yield than they do in Champagne.

English Sparkling Wine replaces Champagne at the top tables

In recent years due to the increasing reputation of English Sparkling Wine it is now the favoured Sparkling Wine in many important venues (take for example the well-publicized presence of English Sparkling Wine at 10 Downing Street, at state banquets at Buckingham Palace and Coates & Seely’s own prominent presence in all the Historic Royal Palaces. The English fizz continues to flow at all the best luxury events such as Glyndebourne, the Grand National, Royal Ascot and the Boat Race.

It’s no coincidence some of the most prestigious Champagne houses are now buying or planting English vineyards and selling luxury English Champagne under their Champagne house label.

A Vineyard Diary Part 12

There is a genius in these English chalk soils that produces Champagne varietals – Chardonnay and Pinot Noir – of great quality, which even pandemics and late-spring frosts can’t affect.

Vineyards and Coronavirus

The story so far: after late spring frosts, record levels of rainfall and a resurgent pandemic, how will the harvest be affected?

Chardonnay Harvest 2020 at Coates & Seely — Chardonnay Harvest 2020

The harvest is finally in.

Neither the coldest late-spring frost in decades (Diary Entry 4), nor the wettest day ever recorded in the UK (October 2, mid-harvest) – nor even a global pandemic – have managed to affect the quality of the fruit.

The harvest this year might be very small, but it’s undeniably beautiful.

A vintage year, despite it all…

This afternoon, with all the fruit now picked, I stood on the hill overlooking the vineyards.

They lie in the quiet, wooded hills between the clear chalk stream of the River Test that flows along the valley floor to the south and the high chalk ridge of Watership Down to the north, in a secluded v-shaped valley.

They are a winemaker’s dream, where chalk soils and clay caps disgorge rugged flints that help retain the heat of the sun, warming the top-soils; whilst in the late summer and early autumn the enclosed valley helps trap the last of the season’s heat to ripen the grapes.

C&S Pinot Noir Vineyard Harvest 2020 — Coates & Seely Pinot Noir vineyard during Harvest 2020

The fruit that then emerges contains the perfect balance of crisp acidity and sweetness, as well as the saline minerality, that lie at the heart of all great sparkling wine.

There is a genius in these English chalk soils that produces Champagne varietals – Chardonnay and Pinot Noir – of great quality, which even pandemics and late-spring frosts can’t affect.

People still express surprise when I say this, but why shouldn’t it be so?

It was as recently as 1830 that a Mr Cox, from Buckinghamshire, planted an English apple tree called an Orange Pippin. It was an experiment. Today, Cox’s Orange Pippin – with its razor-crisp flesh, beguiling sugars and thrilling acidity – is an apple unsurpassed anywhere in the world!

And so it is proving with English, chalk-grown grapes for sparkling wine. Just look at where the Champenois are now beginning to plant.

Chardonnay grapes C&S Harvest 2020 — Coates & Seely Chardonnay grapes

As I turn my back to the vineyards to head home, my phone pings.

Trade talks with the EU have been abandoned.

I feel a sadness, after all we have been through together, that we can’t even agree our trading arrangements.

After all, ten thousand years ago you could still have walked – just – from where I am standing, overlooking the vineyards, all the way to the region of Champagne, before the ice-melt of the last glacial period finally severed the last remaining land connection to the rest of the European continent, setting us off on our long island story.

Geologically speaking we are at least first cousins.

We share, too, the same long hinterland of triumphs and endeavour and sacrifice, same side or not.

So whatever the final outcome, we shall continue to work with our continental friends, to learn from their craftsmanship, to enjoy our differences and to sell them our wines.

It will take more than politics to prevent that.

As it takes more than frost, or a pandemic, to degrade our wines.

A Vineyard Diary Part 11

Virginia Coates, Head of Events demonstrates local and seasonal food pairing with English sparkling wine from Coates & Seely.

Vineyards and Coronavirus

The story so far: life begins to return to something closer to normality, with the hospitality sector having taken the first early steps towards re-opening, (although crowd-related ‘events’ remain prohibited). Meanwhile, we have completed the first curated tours of Coates & Seely on ‘Albion’, our 1952 vintage coach…

In addition to a curated guide of the vineyards and winery, with transport provided by ‘Albion’, our tour-guests are also treated to food matching – with canapés made from our own ingredients or those of our neighbours – followed by lunch outside under Indian Mughal tents.

Virginia’s culinary skills at this point play a leading role, proving that the chalk soils of North Hampshire not only provide outstanding fruit for the production of English sparkling wine, but also the perfect ingredients for food pairings with our wines.

Food pairing with English Sparkling Wine

England has no food and wine ’vernacular’, in the way that French or Italian wine regions, for instance, have developed – sometimes over centuries – local food dishes that perfectly match the local wines, but we have made an exciting start at Coates & Seely, knowing that no wine is ever entirely complete without matching food and the deep pleasure of accompanying friendship.

Here is Virginia at work.

A Vineyard Diary Part 10

Coates & Seely launch the private tours of their Hampshire vineyard and winery including sparkling wine tasting and food pairing lunch.

Vineyards and Coronavirus

The story so far: after battles with disappearing workforces, collapsing markets, devilish frosts and government fug, are we seeing the early glimpses of a return to a previous life?

Hampshire Vineyard Private Tour lunch under Indian Mughal Tent

In anticipation of the re-opening of the hospitality sector next week, and in an attempt to make up in some part for the lost, but essential, life pleasures of eating and drinking in beautiful surroundings, we have decided to open our Hampshire gardens and English Sparkling Wine vineyards and offer socially-distanced Private Tours of our vineyards and winery, followed by tastings, food pairings and lunch under Indian Mughul tents.

Given the constraints we are under the tours, filmed below, can only be taken by groups of 8-12 people and are aimed principally at the corporate hospitality sector or perhaps for those special occasions.

(to be continued….)

A Vineyard Diary Part 9

Coates & Seely applaud and salute the hospitality industry inspired by generosity and care for their staff and the vulnerable throughout the pandemic.

Vineyards and Coronavirus

The story so far: beyond the struggle to survive pandemics and mother nature, and through the chaos and absurdities of current lockdown policy, the shoots of practical self-help continue to take root.

Commedia dell’Arte – also known as Commedia alla Maschera (masked comedy), or Commedia Improvviso – is said to have died out in the late 18^th century.

Nevertheless, it appears to be making a concerted comeback, in only the thinnest of disguises, with our current leadership.

What could be more ‘improvised’ (and comic, if it weren’t so tragic) than the current farrago around quarantine?

Or a more perfect comic plot than the tortured issue of wearing (or not wearing) (or being seen to wear) a face ‘mask’?

It is as if Il Capitano, Scaramouche and Il Dottore have metamorphosed into some of our most (or least!) eminent politicians. (We will leave it to you to apply names to characters. By email, please – the best suggestions to qualify for a bottle of Coates & Seely).

Away from this hopeless mess, it is heartening to see so many of our clients within the hospitality sector – one of the worst to be hit by the pandemic – emerge with initiatives of their own, fired both by generosity and resourcefulness.

Into the first category fall the Caprice Group of restaurants, who in conjunction with the Richard Caring Foundation have opened the kitchens of The Ivy Collection, Scott’s, Annabel’s, Le Caprice and Bill’s across the country to provide 50,000 meals a week to the vulnerable throughout the pandemic. And our dear friends at Food Show, one of the most renowned events caterers in London, who have done something very similar.

These are wonderful, real-life performances, inspired by generosity and care for their staff, which we applaud and salute.

Initiative and resourcefulness also abound. Skye Gyngell of Spring and Heckfield Place has helped protect their inspired kitchen garden at Heckfield, their bio-dynamic farm supplier, Fern Verrow in Herefordshire, as well their own chefs, by supplying their renowned sourdough breads and kefir butter, cakes, jams and cordials and specialist store cupboard ingredients for their stranded London customers via an on-line shop.

Simon and Jason, at The Wellington Arms in Baughurst, have done something similar, turning their restaurant into the Welli Deli where each morning you can find their signature cheese soufflés, crab & asparagus quiches and home-grown miniature vegetables, along with bottles of Coates & Seely, alongside a good-natured gathering of satisfied local customers.

In London, the Cubitt House group have turned The Coach Makers Arms, The Orange and The Alfred Tennyson into purveyors of the finest takeaways; whilst the deeply talented Jonny Lake and Isa Bal – previously head chef and head sommelier, respectively, at The Fat Duck – have launched an online shop to supplement Trivet, their quite outstanding new restaurant in Bermondsey, which we urge you all to visit the minute lockdown is over (it is the most exciting new restaurant in London).

All of these inspirational establishments, as well as hundreds of our other friends within the industry, will in time thrive once more in providing outstanding service, at the very highest levels, to their devoted customers.

But we do urgently need the current cast of comic characters to speak their final lines, promptly, clearly and judiciously, without contradiction or inconsistency, and to remove themselves from the hospitality stage as soon as possible, as has now been done in almost every other European country.

Not just to save jobs, companies and whole industries, but to save livelihoods.

To ensure success, they might also quarantine the Home Secretary…

Finally, to soften this rather irritable tone, we invite all our friends of Coates & Seely to put themselves forward to win a fabulous prize of bottles of Coates & Seely, boxes of Summerdown Mint Chocolates and photo frames from our friends at Addison Ross.

(to be continued….)