Coates & Seely: The Perfect Pairing

The Jockey Club: Virginia Coates, February 20th 2020

COATES & SEELY AND THE JOCKEY CLUB

Coates & Seely and racing share many attributes: our grapes are grown on the south facing chalk slopes of the North Hampshire Downs, the home to many top racehorse studs – the perfect “terroir” for award winning wines and racehorse winners. The vines thrive on the thin layer of topsoil, pushing their roots down into the chalk, never lacking water which emerges from the aquifers deep below. Racehorses bred on these grasslands have also been proven to thrive, many a winner has been raised on the chalk soil within a stone’s throw of Coates & Seely’s vineyards.

Racing has long been at the heart of British Society. It has been traditional for a day at the races to include fizz with friends, and now there is the opportunity to crack open English sparkling wines at the bar, in the restaurant or at your picnic – an ideal way to spend a day at the races or to celebrate a victory – a natural evolution of the traditions, as Coates & Seely is quintessentially a British brand, along with The Jockey Club.

Both C&S and The Jockey Club are so proud to be British and working in partnership. This harmony was confirmed by a curious coincidence: C&S acquired a retired 1952 British Leyland vintage coach, in British Racing Green, with a “champagne bar” fitted at the entrance, from an event company in Belgian. We repatriated the coach and were thrilled to realise the lucky synergy of the transaction, as it was registered with the number plate “JCK”. The return journey of the coach to Britain coincided with the signing up of our very special partnership with The Jockey Club.

Albion – an ancient name for Britain – as we have named the coach, gets taken to the races at Epsom, Sandown and Newmarket, where it acts as a perfect focal point to serve our English sparkling wines. So photogenic is this vehicle, that it has already earned its keep on a number of occasions, by appearing on request on ITV racing news with Francesca Cumani. Inside Albion are intimate tables to enjoy a glass of C&S, outside are bars in British Racing Green, the colour of our marketing long before we went to the races, with parasols to keep off the blazing British sun.

Coates & Seely is a young company, based on an old friendship, between Nicholas Coates and Christian Seely, who studied at business school together in France; idling many a day at the races. After their respective careers in finance and the wine world, they came together in 2008 to start a business with a mutual passion and the desire to create the very best English sparkling wines.

Their aim from the start was to create wines which reflect the high quality of the English chalk “terroir”, using only the best grapes under the guidance of the top French winemakers and consultants from Champagne. Their efforts were rewarded from the start – the wines were launched in 2011 and the first discerning hotels to order were the Georges V and Hotel Bristol in Paris; subsequently many top awards have been given; and in 2019 the International Wine & Spirit Challenge gave the trophy for the “top bottle fermented sparkling wine in the world” to Coates & Seely. It’s like winning the Derby with a newly discovered racehorse, who has been selectively bred from purebred lines, in new surroundings – and we are still celebrating!

Coates & Seely is listed in many top establishments including the Fat Duck, the Savoy, the Dorchester and Annabel’s; in museums and galleries across London; in five of the Royal Palaces and in ten different countries. The Rosé is served in Paris by Alain Ducasse in his restaurant, by the glass. In addition private clients around the world enjoy the fizz and C&S are so proud to be listed by The Jockey Club at so many of their racecourses.

When we cracked open our first bottle, we reflected that if we lived in a wine producing area of the world, or in Champagne, there would be food in the vernacular, local food matchings that would bring out the best in the wines. Just as winemaking has developed in Britain, so has the availability of top ingredients grown locally, making the development of local food matches a joy. At Coates & Seely we encourage people to drink C&S not just as an aperitif, or in celebration, but throughout lunch or dinner, as the wines work well with so many foods. I trained as a chef under Pru Leith and worked around the world as a private chef, and now work for Coates & Seely as the in-house chef and head of events. I take a particular interest in the wine and food served by the Jockey Club in so many spectacular locations.

When you arrive at the races, a glass of Coates & Seely is the perfect way to get you in the mood for the day, so I would start with a glass before lunch. To follow, if you are having a picnic, the Jockey Club chefs have put together an inspired British Luxury Hamper to serve at the races. The range of ingredients and menu choices reflect the best of British food, yet cooked with Continental flair and confidence, using imaginative recipes, all of which will pair perfectly with the bottle of Coates & Seely Rose NV included in the hamper. The only snag I can see, is you will feel tempted to open more than the one bottle provided!

Chicken Liver Paté, to start, works perfectly with the Rosé, the earthiness of the paté, matches well the sweet fruit of the fizz.

The Beef and Smoked Salmon, so British, are also a natural pairing. I love to make Quail Scotch Eggs to serve at picnics, so I am glad to see them included alongside the healthy lentil salad.

The puddings are too tempting, and at this point in the picnic I would take a break from the C&S to pace yourself, with the South Downs Water, to clear the palate and save the last glass of Rosé for the wonderful selection of three English cheeses – another example of the skill in British craftsmanship. If there is any fizz left in the bottle, bring it out at tea time (or order another one!) – the cream tea, an essential English experience, served with strawberry jam, will be enhanced by a glass of Coates & Seely, and by then you will hopefully be celebrating your victories.

A bottle of Coates & Seely can be found within the Luxury Hamper in the Great British Picnic enclosure at the Investec Derby Festival.

Virginia Coates, Head of Events at Coates & Seely

A Vineyard Diary Part 5

Vineyards and Coronavirus

At Coates & Seely we while away the magical hour between 6pm and 7pm, when the deliveries are done and our worldly cares vanish in the innocent blush of a first drink, with the creation of a number of new cocktails designed specifically for Coronavirus lock-down (collectively, a “quarantini”).

Christian out-classes us all in this particular endeavour, devoting his considerable knowledge and energy in pursuit of perfection.

His current masterpiece is what we have decided to call a ‘Sbagliato Cinese’: 1/3 Campari, 1/10 Carpano Antica Bitters and the rest sparkling wine (best, of course, with Coates & Seely)

You should not wait for the lifting of lock-down to try this quarantini, nor be deceived by the name. It is utterly delicious, and by altering the fractions of the ingredients you can achieve either a sensible or a thrillingly rapid ascent to heaven (a useful contingency in current circumstances).

On the subject of quarantinis, you will have noticed the current pandemic is spawning a new vocabulary.

A “coronacoaster”, describing the emotional gyrations in a pandemic – loving lock-down one minute and weeping with anxiety the next – would, if we were classifying each new word, definitely be awarded a ‘first-growth’.

There are many others, which you will no doubt have seen. What you might not have seen, however, is that there is a saint who shares a name with this pandemic: a young female martyr, slain by the Romans in the second century AD for comforting a tortured enemy soldier, and canonized subsequently as St Corona.

Today, she is revered principally in the small town of St Corona am Weschel, in Austria – which is, perhaps not surprisingly, still under lock-down.

Do visit, though, when lock-down is finally lifted.

Its principal attraction is its state-of-the-art theme park.

“The Corona Park”, we are told, is set amongst verdant hills and its centrepiece – the “Corona Coaster” – can be experienced (by contrast to the Sbagliato Cinese) with either a comfortable or a thrillingly rapid descent (in this case, to hell…)

Still to be pondered at this stage, though, is an apposite word for the socially-distanced drinks party that will soon be following once lock-down is lifted.

We have already received early orders of Coates & Seely in anticipation of this new phenomenon.

Its merits are clear, presenting as it does, with its guaranteed distancing of up to 2 metres from any bore in the room, the perfect alibi for not listening, with near complete protection from even the most determined of spittle, and capped by significantly enhanced escape (and exfiltration) potential.

But we do need a name for it.

Answers please, and a bottle of Coates & Seely (or, for the hard-core among you, a Sbagliato Cinese), to the winner.

(to be continued….)

A Vineyard Diary Part 4

Vineyards and Coronavirus

Rosie describes herself on her twitter page as a “Proud Northern Girl”, but this tells only half the story.

She is also a senior nurse on a COVID 19 ITU ward at University College Hospital London.

Rosie approaches us out of the blue (as angels do) for some sponsorship of the UCHL nurses, having tasted Coates & Seely wines with her family in happier times.

We respond positively and deliver our contribution to her flat in Bethnal Green.

It’s five weeks into lockdown when we do, and she has just finished a 13 hour shift at the end of a 70 hour working week, but she’s still smiling. She’s been unable to see any of her family, whom she’s missing badly, for many weeks now, yet she radiates good humour.

We offer to help her carry the heavy boxes of Coates & Seely we have brought with us up the long flight of stairs to her flat, but despite her exhaustion she insists on doing it herself, conscious of the hazard to us.

Always thinking of others.

With her best friend, Jenny, another senior nurse on the ward, they started a campaign called Kindness a few weeks ago.

It’s a campaign that does what it says.

Initially contrived to source cosmetics for nurses whose faces are raw after 13 hours under face-masks, the campaign has since broadened rapidly.

‘Cowshed’ provided the first face-creams and hand lotions but numerous firms, in response to the nurses’ gentle campaign, have since chipped in.

‘Itsu’ now provide daily sustenance, ‘Ferrero Rocher’ chocolates, ‘Camden Brewery’ beer and ‘Roberts Radios’ a soothing voice from the outside world, to name just a few.

As the goods flood in, Rosie and Jenny spend what little time they have off dispensing them across the huge ITU nursing staff at UCHL.

This is a time-consuming logistical task in itself, but it raises morale and brings some much-needed light into the frequent darkness of their working lives.

Rosie says it’s worth all the extra work just to see the smiles on the nurses’ faces. Many of them, particularly the younger ones, are fearful and lonely.

If anyone wishes to contribute items to their Kindness campaign, Rosie can be contacted on Rosalind.edwards2@nhs.net or tweeted on @rosebud2605.

They will be as grateful as they are giving.

Nearer to home, we deliver the rest of our charitable budget to the equally wonderful ITU nurses at Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital, each of them exposed to the same hardships of combatting COVID 19, which they do on all of our behalves.

May God bless them all.

(to be continued….)

A Vineyard Diary Part 2

Vineyards and Coronavirus

It’s 7.30 am.

A cold northerly breeze is whipping across the vineyard. The country is in lockdown, imposed the night before by an uncharacteristically subdued PM.

I am the first to arrive.

Ahead of me 35,000 vines shiver in the wind, like expectant children, waiting to be pruned. There is no sign of the Romanian pruning team.

Ten minutes later, my phone rings.

“I’m sorry, Nick, but they’ve gone.”

“Gone?”

“Gone.”

The silence is palpable.

“Where the hell to?”

“To Romania. It’s home.”

It takes a while for the implications to sink in.

The vines need pruning. Without pruning, there will be no fruit.

Already our existing wine sales, made largely to the hospitality and events sectors, have plummeted, and with the nation in lockdown they will rapidly fall to zero. No sales, and now, no wine.

Bugger…

Give us botrytis, mildews, drought, floods, wild boars, even Jean Claude Juncker, but please, not this…

Rapid calls to the Home Team.

By 9am Virginia (Head of Events, Left), Georgie (Office Manager, Right) and Tristram (Head of Sales, Centre) have joined Paulo (Vineyard Manager), Andras (Technical Director) and I on the vineyards. We work all day but by 4pm are in despair. It’s a Dad’s Army moment.

There is no way we can hope to finish on time, and the buds will be bursting in just a week from now.

At 4.30pm Tristram puts out a Facebook request.

By 10pm he has 40 willing pruners from among the young, stranded at home unexpectedly, furloughed by school and university. Of the 40, ten have their own transport and can start at 8.30am the following day. They are selected.

“Hands up anyone with a degree in biology.”

A single hand goes up from among the new recruits, all standing 2 metres apart, all on time at 8.30am sharp, armed with pack-lunches and with broad smiles on their faces.

“Ok. You’re hired. Any engineers?”

Two hands raised.

“Mathematicians?”

Another two.

Perfect. They can be the pruners, the vanguard, to be inducted within twenty minutes into the arcane science of spur-pruning.

“The rest of you Liberal Arty-Farters can follow me (English Literature) and Tristram (Theology). We will follow behind, pull out the pruned wood and tie down the canes. ”

Like vineyard, like life.

Each worker is given four rows, of equal length. Ten metres apart. Too far to talk and relative progress visible to all.

“Ready, Steady, Go!”

The competitive juices, like rising sap, flow furiously and work-rates are phenomenal. Social distancing is a gang-master’s nirvana.

Eight days later and we’ve finished. The team is still smiling broadly. The sun is shining and the wind has turned almost southerly. We are in shirt sleeves. The vines are pruned and tied down, like obedient children, ready to burst into life.

Whoever had the effrontery to call the young ‘Snow-flakes’?

They worked hard and they worked fast, always on time, with never a moan, despite the aching backs and bruised hands (pruning is a hard discipline), and always with smiles. They showed true grit.

They were a revelation and, in the circumstances, a mercy, too.

THANK YOU OUR INSPIRING YOUNG TEAM!

PLEASE COME AGAIN NEXT YEAR!

A Vineyard Diary Part 1

Vineyards and Coronavirus

Vineyards are deceptively dangerous things.

Like sirens calling sailors to the rocks, they sing a song of natural beauty whilst the perils – and there are many – remain concealed.

Our own first siren-call, etched clearly in our minds, was in September 1998.

We were staying as a guest of Christian’s at Quinta do Noval vineyard, in the Douro Valley, for the ‘Vindima’, or harvest.

With young children and hectic work and family schedules we were, at that point in our lives, as much inclined to seek to own a vineyard as to volunteer to space-walk without oxygen, yet we were unknowingly about to experience our first call to the rocks.

It would happen each evening, at the end of a sweltering day, after the last of the wicker baskets, groaning with fruit, had been heaved up through the ancient stone terraces.

We would sit under the Cedar of Lebanon in front of the Quinta, as the shadows lengthened, and sip chilled white port and tonic whilst the distant song of the ‘vindimadores’, treading the grapes in the ‘lagares’ further down the hill, would float back in the cool night air, like a siren-call.

There was something almost impossibly romantic about the sound and the place.

Quinta do Noval vineyard, Portugal — Quinta do Noval

It was another ten years before we finally succumbed to the call altogether and decided to plant an English Sparkling Wine vineyard ourselves around our home in Hampshire, in partnership with Christian. And it is now, over 20 years later, that we are embarked on our own, twelfth harvest.

Over the years we have experienced many of the dangers lurking beneath the viticultural romance: the late spring-frosts that in late April and early May can ravage the infant vine-buds just as they are bursting into life; the rain and the cold that can destroy the essential flowering in June; the mildews and botrytis that insinuate themselves like silent assassins as the grapes develop; the marauding song-birds, with their perfect palate for ripe fruit; to say nothing of the wasps and the fruit flies and a whole assortment of other devastating insect-life on the vineyard.

We have experienced, too, the misery of an entirely failed harvest.

2012 was the English wine industry’s ‘annus horribilis’ (it was also the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee: you might remember that chilly, rain-sodden summer as the Thames flotilla lurched through horizontal rain and a soaked Duke of Edinburgh never once batted an eyelid?) One of the more astute English sparkling winemakers proudly announced, Yquem-like, (although no doubt through gritted teeth), that they would make no wine that year. Nor did we, as it happens. The fruit just wasn’t good enough, but we were too grief-stricken to turn it into a PR coup.

“How”, I remember asking Christian at the time – no doubt sounding like some old testament Israelite – “could this happen? Just how much more can be thrown at us?”

“Lots” he replied, a master of sanguine.

He has been doing this for far longer, and is rather more grown up about it.

“We have never had giant hailstones in England, that can destroy a harvest, and sometimes an entire vineyard, as frequently happens on the Continent. Nor do we suffer from excess heat, that can shrivel the fruit to raisins. Nor,” he added, warming to his theme, “do we suffer from grape-eating racoons, as they do in Germany, or wild boar in Italy, baboons in South Africa, or glassy winged sharpshooter flies in California.”

Of course he is right.

The vineyard is always greener on the other side and, as the sirens will attest, they are treacherous things wherever you are.

But then, as we now all know, came Coronavirus…

(To be continued)

Coates & Seely wins International Sparkling Wine Trophy of 2019

IWSC have awarded their coveted Bottle Fermented Sparkling Wine Trophy to Hampshire based Coates & Seely Vintage ‘La Perfide’.

Following their Gold medal win earlier in the year for their Blanc de Blancs 2009 Vintage ‘La Perfide’, Coates & Seely are honoured to have gone on to be awarded the IWSC Bottle Fermented Sparkling Wine Trophy against all international sparkling wines. With a score of 97 points, ‘La Perfide’ beat all other bottle-fermented sparkling wines from around the world – a triumph for them and for the English sparkling wine category as a whole.

Nicholas Coates said: “The 2009 Blanc de Blancs ‘La Perfide’ is the first wine Coates & Seely ever made, and it bodes well for the future ‘Perfide’ vintages, the next of which – our Blancs de Noir 2014 ‘La Perfide’ – will be available in 2020.”

Co-Founder Christian Seely added: “This particular wine has now won all five of the major trophies for the best English sparkling wine and confirms our conviction that the best English sparkling wines can rival the best in the world.”

C&S at the IWSC 50th anniversary Awards Banquet, held at the Guildhall

Coates & Seely were privileged to be celebrating their win on the auspicious occasion of the IWSC 50th anniversary Awards Banquet, held at the Guildhall in London on Thursday 28th November.

Sparkling Wine Trophy winner Coates & Seely

IWSC Judges’ Tasting Notes

“Clean silvery stream of bubbles flows through the pale yellow wine. Rich and a tad decadent: roast lemons, plum skin, cashew, toast. The palate is quite broad, with plenty of citrus acidity; it drives beautifully over the tongue. Mineral and very long finish.”

Established in 1969, The International Wine & Spirit Competition (IWSC) was the first competition of its kind, set up to seek out, reward and promote the world’s best wines, spirits and liqueurs. Now in its 50th year, the IWSC’s relentless pursuit of excellence underpins every aspect of the competition today – allowing it to be recognised internationally as a badge of quality. Currently receiving entries from over 90 countries, the IWSC is truly international in its reach and recognition. Its global partners work to promote winners to both trade and consumer audiences throughout the year.