Category: Press

Sphere Magazine

Words by Flora Drummond-Smith

8th March 2019

With the same chalk soil as Champagne, Coates & Seely English sparkling wine shares many similarities with the famous French fizz but is also a unique expression of its unique terroir.

“We are standing on a rather magical piece of land,” confides Nicholas Coates, co-founder of English sparkling winemaker Coates & Seely, as we stand overlooking the rolling hills of the vineyard. Located in the North Hampshire Downs, the vineyard resides on the same chalk ridge that dominates the Paris basin and the Champagne region. “When we started, we sent a soil sample to the agronomy department at the university of Bordeaux — not marking where it was from — and the results showed it had come from Champagne. They were surprised when we told them it was actually from England,” says Coates. “In this sense we really are first cousins to the Champagne region.”

Once considered a fool’s errand, producing sparkling wine in England is now an established practice and even some of the great French champagne houses, from Taittinger to Pommery, have put down roots in English soil. For Coates & Seely, as with many of the French Maisons, it is the geological composition of the chalk soil that is the crucial factor. “The difference is that the humid, maritime climate in the UK means planting densities are half of what you get in Champagne, which means that the fruit yield is half and the wine more expensive,” explains Coates. “But the quality of the fruit we grow here is proof that it’s worth it.”

Established in 2007 by Coates, a former financier, and fellow Englishman the company began with a conversation over a bottle of wine, whereby Coates asked Seely whether he would consider producing sparkling wine in England. Not only wasSeely’s answer yes, but he had already drawn up a plan for it — although finding the right site was vital to the project. After scouring Southern England, they found a small vineyard a mere mile from Coates’ family home near Whitchurch. Overgrown and unruly, it had to be tamed before it was replanted (along with several additional acres in the valley) with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, the three grapes used to make champagne.

As English wine is still a young industry, with few sparkling winemakers in the UK having more than 20 years experience, Coates cites working with and learning from the French a key factor in successfully producing a wine. “We revere French winemaking and champagne, which is why we create Coates & Seely according to the traditional méthode champenoise — second fermentation in the bottle followed by the process of disgorgement.” Coates & Seely also works in partnership with a series of expert wine consultants, including Stéphane Derenoncourt and Arnaud Gimonnet, who bring a wealth of wine intelligence to the table.

“It’s always been about collaboration,” explains Coates. “At the very beginning it was a managing director of Axa Millésimes (owners of Château Pichon-Longueville and Château

Christian Seely, Suduiraut), collaboration between Christian and me. He made all the initial decisions about method and which winemakers we would partner with, while I worked on the financial and business side of things. Now it’s bigger than that: it’s a collaboration with all the winemakers and consultants we work with, too.”

Although much of Coates & Seely’s winemaking practice is rooted in the méthode champenoise, it is also subtly different in that some of the methods employed are traditionally used to produce still wine, such as the press technology used. “More commonly associated with still white wine production [the press technology] is particularly effective in emphasising the character of the fruit and aroma,” says Coates. “This is important if what we are attempting to do is express the individual nature of our fruit and terroir”.

Playing with the traditional process, Coates & Seely also ferments wine in four large egg- shaped concrete vessels, the likes of which are more commonly seen in Napa Valley. Enveloped in a thick layer of concrete, the eggs keep a more constant temperature throughout fermentation, resulting in a vin clair that has softer, fatter notes. “This gives us another colour on the palette to use when it comes to blending the wine. It makes the end result unique.”

Blending punchy vin clairs that won’t be drunk for five to ten years is a high form of artistry, one that requires in-depth knowledge of wine and how it will develop, an exceptional palate and years of experience, and is a stage undertaken by Coates & Seely’s top French winemakers. All the final decisions on wine, however, from blends to dosage levels and aging, are made by the duo, such as the decision to add less sugar to the wine as acidity levels in Hampshire are lower than in Champagne — something the wine consultants occasionally dispute. Despite this, “we work seamlessly and collaboratively with the winemakers, drawing on their experience and their artistry to produce wine to the highest standards”.

Paying homage to the shared chalk soil, the French winemaking influence and vintners involvement in the making of Coates & Seely, the bottles carry the designation “Méthode Britannique” on their labels. “We work with the French finding ways to express a different terroir that is unique and idiosyncratic. We are not trying to emulate anything else.” 

On 22nd May, at the 37th London Wine Fair, it was announced that Coates & Seely’s Blanc de Blancs ‘La Perfide’ 2009 has been awarded the International Wine Challenge Trophy for the best English Blanc de Blancs at this year’s IWC Awards.  Judged to be the best in category, this gold medal-winning English Sparkling wine very much impressed the judges, who unanimously declared it a deserving winner.

This is one of the first wines Coates & Seely ever made, in its very first year of production.  It has taken five and a half long years of lees-ageing, and a further two years on cork, to bring it to where it is today: ‘singing’, at last.

The name ‘La Perfide’ is a teasing reference to ‘Albion la Perfide’, or ‘Perfidious Albion’, as the French refer to us, and what better a way to acknowledge the enduring respect we feel for the great wines of Champagne than to call our best vintage wines by this name?

We always believed, when we started Coates & Seely eight years ago, that one day it would be possible to make in this country sparkling wines that, in terms of quality, would match the greatest sparkling wines in the world, including those of Champagne.

This Blanc de Blancs 2009 ‘La Perfide’ is the first in a line of other, even better, vintages, or ‘Perfides, that Coates & Seely currently having ageing quietly ‘sur latte’,  and encourages us more than ever in our belief.

The Telegraph Online: Victoria Moore, Wine correspondent

At a party at the Ritz Hotel this week, the English wine producer Nyetimber introduced a brace of new sparkling wines. It’s fair to say that any discussion of the wines was rapidly overshadowed by talk of the ambitious pricing strategy. At £150 for the sparkling white from the 2009 vintage and £175 for the sparkling rosé from 2010, the pair immediately became, and by some margin, the most expensive English wines ever released.

In economic terms, the pricing sets the two new Nyetimber 1086 wines above some of the most fêted names from Champagne, such as Krug Grande Cuvée (around £135); Dom Pérignon 2009 (£140); and Philipponnat Clos des Goisses 2007 (around £136).

Are they in any way worth it? Perhaps before we get on to that it’s worth a quick detour to consider how far Nyetimber has come in a short space of time.

The estate was bought 31 years ago by an American couple from Chicago called Stuart and Sandy Moss. It included a run-down manor house that once belonged to Anne of Cleves, the fourth wife of Henry VIII. It did not include chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot meunier vines – the received wisdom of the day was that attempting to grow these champagne varieties in England was madness. In 1988, Stuart and Sandy planted them anyway. They made good wine. Nyetimber found itself at the forefront of a revolution. Ownership passed from the Mosses to songwriter Andy Hill (most famous for his work with Bucks Fizz) and in 2006 it was bought by Eric Heerema, a Dutchman who set about building the brand with purpose and determination.

“One of the things we really bonded over when we first spoke was Eric’s drive for quality. He talked about the unfulfilled potential in England,” says Brad Greatrix, one half of the winemaking couple that Heerema hired in 2007. Perhaps it tells you something about the speed at which Heerema likes to operate that three weeks after his first speculative contact with Greatrix, and his wife Cherie Spriggs, the couple had uprooted themselves from Canada, and were already settling in to their first day at work.

In the last decade, English wine has moved forward extremely rapidly. We have more vineyards; the wines have improved; the reputation of the wines has grown. As this has been happening there has also been something of an arms race to produce the country’s most expensive wine.

Did Nyetimber start it? Perhaps it did. Nyetimber Tillington Single Vineyard 2009 was released in 2013 at £75 – significantly more than its closest English competitor. Everyone gasped and muttered about ambitious pricing, then everyone tasted it, and agreed that to their surprise it was extremely good – even, perhaps, worth spending £75 on. Before long, other entrants into the market – such as the Coates & Seely La Perfide Blanc de Blancs 2009 (current price: £65) – meant that the Tillington Single Vineyard no longer stood apart from the rest of the English crowd. In spring 2017 the Kent-based producer Chapel Down launched a sparkling wine called Kit’s Coty Coeur de Cuvée 2013. At £100 a bottle, it became England’s new most expensive wine.

When it came to the new Nyetimber 1086 wines – the name is a reference to the Domesday Book in which Nyetimber is mentioned – my main thought was not, “How much will they be?” But, “How much more than £100 will they be?” I reckoned the Nyetimber wines would not come out for less than £120. I was right, but not right enough. Like a player in an auction who ups his bid by a punchy chunk to discourage others from following him, Heerema (who apparently set the prices with his sales manager) went even higher.

I can’t tell you to go out and buy the wines at this price (though if you do want to, the white is more impressive than the red). This is no reflection on the skill of winemaker Cherie Spriggs who, using the best grapes from two vintages (2009 for the white and 2010 for the rosé) has made two rather good wines.

It’s just that, firstly, I’m not sure they are Nyetimber’s best wines. They are not especially rare (there are 2,600 bottles and almost 40 magnums of the white and 12,000 bottles and 850 magnums of the pink). Perhaps most importantly, English wine has not – yet – reached the level at which such prices are remotely appropriate within the existing hierarchy. Tasting these two new cuvées provided no order-shattering moment of revelation, at least not for me, or for anyone else I have spoken to. For instance, Krug Grande Cuvée is, quite simply, a better wine, and one with a bigger reputation.

But as an effect of the pricing something else interesting has happened. Just as the release of the first £75 Tillington Single Vineyard five years ago made Nyetimber’s Classic Cuvée feel better value, so the mere existence of a £150 and £175 duo at the top of the pyramid increases the appeal of the Tillington Vineyard .

This is called a framing effect. It’s a classic piece of selling psychology that makes you feel that by choosing the Tillington you’re saving £95 rather than spending £80 (the current price listed on the Harrods website for the excellent 2010). I notice people already looking at the Tillington with renewed interest. And I can’t help thinking that this must have been part of Heerema’s strategy. So if you do want to try a luxurious English wine – can I suggest you go and look for the Nyetimber Tillington Single Vineyard 2010 (Harrods, £80) – it’s a very fine expression of a single English site in Sussex, and a wine that contains a splinter of magic.