Vineyard Diary – Coates and Seely

A Vineyard Diary September 2024

Emperor Naruhito of Japan and King Charles III – sipping Coates & Seely at Buckingham Palace, at the state banquet hosted by his majesty for the Emperor, was a signal honour for us.

A King, an Emperor, and a Glass of Coates & Seely

There is now just a single Emperor left in the world, and one King of England. To have each of them – Emperor Naruhito of Japan and King Charles III – sipping Coates & Seely at Buckingham Palace, at the state banquet hosted by his majesty for the Emperor, was a signal honour for us and not something we could have contemplated fifteen years ago when we planted our first vines. It has also resulted in instant sales spike in Japan!

On the subject of vine-planting, our new vineyard at Brighstone on the Isle of Wight is flourishing. Now a year old, the vines are relishing the micro-climate of their sun-drenched valley and will produce their first fruit in just two years from now. Our new planting in Hampshire is also developing well and next month, for the first time, we will crop Chardonnay fruit from the vines we planted three years ago.

In June we travelled to Paris, to launch our 2016 Vintage Blanc de Blancs ‘La Perfide’ to French clients, sommeliers and press. We were privileged to be lent the town-house of legendary French designer Christian Liaigre on the Rue du Faubourg, a fitting venue from which to show all our vintages, with resulting new listings from – among others – both the Hotel Crillon and Hotel Bristol.

September has been a fine month for new London listings. We are delighted to have been chosen as the exclusive English sparkling wine for all of Gordon Ramsay’s five ‘prestige’ London restaurants. This involves a total of 18 new listings, of which 7 are by the glass listings at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay (3 Michelin stars), Petrus (2 Michelin stars) and each of the Savoy Grill, 1890 @ the Savoy and the River Restaurant @ the Savoy (all Michelin starred). Three of these by the glass listings are for our vintage ‘La Perfide’ wines, the first time such wines have been listed on a by the glass basis.

We are also delighted to have been chosen as the house English sparkling wine by Jamie Oliver for his new London restaurant St Katherine Street. Celebrating great British producers and suppliers, the restaurant is a celebration of Britain’s rich food culture. Located in a fine Grade One listed house in Covent Garden, Coates & Seely’s Brut Reserve NV and Rosé NV are each listed by the glass as the ‘house-pour’ – a perfect pre- or post-theatre experience.

A Vineyard Diary December 2023

A Winemaker’s Dream – C&S new vineyards on the Isle of Wight

A Winemaker’s Dream and Other Stories

Ten years ago we embarked on a quest to find something so improbably flawless that we wondered whether it could even exist.

A viticultural holy grail.

A single, magical place where the genius of England’s chalk soils might combine with the protective warmth of its extensive coastline, and the idiosyncrasy of site, to produce a winemaker’s dream.

Ten fruitless years of looking and then, just last year, we finally found our ‘grail’.

Above the village of Brighstone, on the Isle of Wight, just a mile from the sea, the south-facing chalk downland rises to a height of 175 metres, before falling precipitously to ancient grassland, meadow and pasture at its feet

Usually such land, so close to the sea, would be windswept, unsuitable for planting of any kind.

But in a geological mutation unrepeated anywhere on the south coast of the island, the land, in this single place, then rises miraculously again to a height of 110 metres, sheltering the southerly slopes behind it from the sea to create a chalk valley of quite exceptional warmth (and, as it happens, great beauty).

A valley in which the silent assassin of late spring-frosts does not venture, and where the chalk soils and carefully selected champagne clones can combine, in undisturbed warmth, to produce the perfect balance of crisp acidity and sweetness, as well as saline minerality, that lie at the heart of all great sparkling wine.

Most of the past fourteen months have been spent acquiring, preparing and then planting these wonderful slopes to create vineyards of outstanding quality and beauty. Which explains why you have heard so little from us in the meantime.

Two of the five fields at Brighstone, IOW, just before planting, June 2023

What time we’ve had to spare has been spent winning some wonderful new by-the-glass listings in such ‘iconic’ venues as Wiltons, The Goring, The Peninsula, Isabel and Casa Cruz, and Gold in Notting Hill, to name but a few.

And in entertaining existing clients of Coates & Seely at home, where Mrs Coates has this year bravely combined local food ingredients from the vineyards and surrounding land with her culinary talents to feed 3 Michelin-starred restaurants ‘The Fat Duck ‘and ‘Core by Clare Smyth’ (each of whom serves Coates & Seely by-the-glass and each involving a sleepless night beforehand), with such other outstanding restaurants as Elystan Street, Scotts Mayfair and Richmond, the Randolph Oxford and the Four Seasons Hampshire, again to name but a few.

Finally, looking ahead, Christmas beckons once more, and the good news at Coates & Seely is that we have, in addition to our usual Brut Reserve NV and Rosé NV wines, a new (and superb) Blanc de Blancs NV, as well as three exciting vintage sparkling wines of exceptional quality.

We wish you and your families a Very Happy and Peaceful Christmas.

Michael Portillo visits Coates & Seely

Michael Portillo visits Coates & Seely to meet the team and discuss the similarity of wine production in the North Hampshire Downs to the Champagne region.

Sunday with Michael Portillo

Taste of Britain: Coates & Seely a very sparkling success

Michael Portillo visits Coates & Seely to meet the team and discuss the similarity of wine production in the North Hampshire Downs to the Champagne region.

Mr Portillo asked co-founder Nicholas Coates how it is possible to grow great wines in Southern England. Nicholas explained that it was largely to do with the similarity of the chalk downlands of England to the Champagne region. The soil type and the cool climate go together to make great Champagne and sparkling wines, such as Coates & Seely.

Even twenty years ago Coates & Seely’s success would have been difficult to achieve but the relative warming over the last couple of decades has nudged the climate to the ideal for sparkling wine grape growth.

Michael Portillo Coates & Seely a very sparkling success

Nicholas went on to explain that the gentle slope and orientation of the Coates & Seely vineyards are key to the perfect ripening of the grapes towards the end of the season in September, with the lower sun levels reaching and ripening all the grapes.

Nicholas introduced Michael to the Coates & Seely winemaker Andras Lorincz at the winery, set in the heart of the Hampshire vineyards.

2022 – A very promising harvest

As Nicholas explained, the key thing with the recently pressed juices is that the sugars and acidity are in perfect balance. This year, a very hot, sweet year, brings an exciting complexity as well as harmony to the flavour of the wines. Andras confirmed 2022 to be a very promising harvest. As affirmed by Mr Portillo, the winemaking process sits on the borderline between science and art.

On leaving the winery, Mr Portillo met Coates & Seely’s Head of Sales – Tristram Coates, on board Albion, the classic racing green British Leyland vintage bus, which has become an essential part of the Coates & Seely sales strategy.

Champagne vs English Sparkling Wine

Michael acknowledged that whenever he could afford to celebrate, he would usually choose a bottle of Champagne over Prosecco or Cava and asked Tristram how Coates & Seely are addressing the prejudice and that, in fact, English sparkling wines can be as good if not better than Champagne.

Michael Portillo meets C&S Head of Sales Tristram Coates

Tristram asserted that, particularly in the last 15 years, English wines are being produced of incredible quality, as agreed by key opinion formers in the wine industry. Testament to the quality of the English wines is the venues where the wines can be found; some of London’s best restaurants and, for Coates and Seely, the George V in Paris – the only English wine ever to be drunk there.

Great English wines

More and more people are beginning to acknowledge that England produces some great wines. Coates & Seely are proud to celebrate their connection to Champagne. Tristram continued that a lot of C&S winemakers come from a Champagne background, and that has been instrumental in ensuring that Coates & Seely wines always reach that optimum quality. Championing the craft of Champagne making on English soil.

The interview ended with Michael Portillo declaring his instant conversion to English sparkling wine.

Michael Portillo declares his conversion to English sparkling wine

A Vineyard Diary December 2022

Michael Portillo Visits Coates & Seely for his Sunday Show and the end of the 2022 grape harvest which promises outstanding quality wine.

Michael Portillo Visits Coates & Seely for his Sunday Show

Best known as a former cabinet minister and a potential heir to Mrs Thatcher, and more recently as the host of the BBC series ‘Great Continental Railway Journeys’, we were delighted to greet Michael Portillo off the 8.50am Waterloo to Overton train earlier in the month and to give him a tour of Coates & Seely.

Michael was preparing a short film for his ‘Sunday with Portillo’ television show, focusing on the Best of British food and drink. This is what he had to say.

Michael’s visit took place soon after this year’s harvest, which was arguably the finest we have yet experienced. A frostless spring, followed by a blazing summer, interspersed with bouts of rain in August and September that helped fatten the berries, produced fruit of outstanding quality and quantity. We are confident that the 2022 harvest will result in the finest wines we have yet produced, although we shall have to wait until 2026 – 2030 to taste them !

On the sales front we continued to acquire new by-the-glass listings at such wonderful restaurants as Wild By Tart and Clos Maggiore, and were honoured to be chosen by the Political Office to supply 10 Downing Street and Chequers, as well as by Government Hospitality who supply wines into state functions at Lancaster House and Buckingham Palace.

Perhaps the most glamorous of the new listings was Scotts, Richmond, the new sister restaurant to Scotts, Mayfair, each of which now serve Coates & Seely by the glass. The new Scotts is somewhere everyone should visit at least once in their lives: a triumph of beauty, sophistication and deep comfort, with timeless views down the Thames across Georgian Richmond, and service that is quite faultless.

To round off the sales news, we have at last entered the US market, having appointed Touton Wines to distribute Coates & Seely down the East coast from Boston, to New York, to Florida. The sales focus will be to high-end hotels and restaurants. Touton are on-trade specialists and have an unrivalled salesforce dedicated to the best restaurants across the Eastern Seabord. We are very excited to have found such a perfect US partner.

Finally, we would remind you that the current Coates & Seely Brut Reserve NV won the Best in Show Trophy at the Decanter World Wine Awards with a score of 97 points. This is remarkable for a non-vintage wine and, with 2023 price rises looming, now is a great time to purchase this outstanding wine at current 2022 prices). The Rose NV is no laggard either, so for those looking to stock up for the Christmas season, these wines are not only delicious but represent terrific value!

Coates & Seely’s Brut Reserve scores 97 points and Best in Show at Decanter World Wine Awards

We wish you and your families a Very Happy Christmas.

A Vineyard Diary Part 16

Coates & Seely, part of the gastronomic cornucopia in the Cheltenham Gold Cup Hamper.

Vineyards and Coronavirus

The story so far: with the prospect of freedom at last now beckoning, we look to provide some pleasurable diversion in the meantime…

Cast your mind back to last March.

The Cheltenham Festival.

A quarter of a million people, in tweeds, furs and trilbies, celebrated the pinnacle of the National Hunt season.

230,000 pints of Guinness were drunk, 20,000 bottles of champagne poured, five tonnes of smoked salmon consumed. The crowds milled happily from tent to paddock to course, meeting friends, talking racing, ‘fleecing’ the bookies and thrilling to the finest national hunt racing festival in the world.

A week later, a pale and drawn prime minister declared the first national lockdown in our country’s thousand year history.

The Festival was an ante-diluvian moment.

Nothing was ever the same after it.

Yet it happened, and it will happen again this year.

Only once in its 161 year history has the festival been cancelled, when the foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001 succeeded where world wars and global pandemics have failed.

This year the racing will again take place as usual, although sadly we shall have to watch from home.

Yet there is cause for celebration.

Spring already beckons with the prospect of renewal, and the virus that has played such havoc with our lives, and the racing, is in decline.

Within a matter of weeks now we shall once again be mixing with friends, eating and drinking together, and enjoying fully one of the greatest national sporting calendars in the world. Meanwhile, to raise morale still further, and to tease your waist-lines, we have teamed up with our friends and partners at Boisdale and Fitzdares to produce an incredible Cheltenham Gold Cup hamper, for delivery direct to your homes on the day.

The Gold Cup hamper, designed for two and to last the whole day, is a veritable cornucopia of British delicacies.

Start the day, reclined comfortably in your bubble, with a Bloody Mary made from English Puffing Billy Stream Vodka and quite the best spiced tomato mix on the market, from the Pickle House.

Study the form while you do so, taking advantage of the free £25 betting voucher provided by our friends at Fitzdares.

As lunch beckons, open a bottle of Coates & Seely Brut Reserve NV, provided by yours truly, before indulging in a maritime saturnalia of Scottish langoustine (with home-made mayo), Dunkeld smoked salmon (with herby crème fraiche), Orkney pickled herrings (with dill and lemon) and potted smoked mackerel (with horseradish and chives). Do not leave your bubble. Protect the NHS.

Choose, then, between a main course of oxtail and parmesan pie (to be oven-heated for 18 mins – the only cooking required in the whole hamper) and the great Boisdale speciality of fillet of beef, Herefordshire asparagus, Cornish new potatoes and English wild garlic salsa verde, followed, in either case, by crème brulée à l’Anglaise with a praline shard and blueberry compôte, and topped off with a selection of Scottish cheeses.

Cheltenham Gold Cup Hamper from Boisdales

Finally, at the end of an afternoon of thrilling racing, as you count your winnings and contemplate the delicious cold supper ahead of you, indulge in some comforting gin and tonics made from London Distillery gin and Double Dutch mixes.

Whether you are in despair at lockdown, in early training for the re-opening of the British social season, or simply in need of an indulgence, these hampers will not disappoint. They are utterly delicious and amazingly good value. Go to Boisdale to place your orders and know that you will also be helping the Great British food and drinks industry back onto its feet…

A Vineyard Diary Part 15

Coates & Seely looks ahead to sunlit uplands and the launch of Glass Half Full Drinks

Vineyards and Coronavirus

The story so far: consigned still to our bubbles, we look through the mists of the current pandemic, and across the dreary terrain of lockdown, to the sunlit uplands…

There are three great ‘natural’ smells in the world.

The smell of freshly baked bread.

The smell from the top of a new-born baby’s head.

And the smell of fermenting wine.

The others – there are too many to mention – of musk roses at night, of newly mown hay, freshly ground coffee, or a lover’s hair, are mere scents.

For each of the great ‘natural’ smells is linked to birth.

If you have never smelt fermenting wine, you must come and visit us, one evening in late October or November, after the harvest, when the grapes have been pressed and the winery doors are closed to the cold and dark outside.

Inside, in the musty warmth, as the first great act of vinification occurs, the smell of fermentation – of a bready sweetness full of fruit and ripeness and mystery – is one you will remember.

Now, with the first fermentation over and the wines safely bottled, the heady smells are gone. But we console ourselves, knowing that the yeasts and sugars inside the bottles are working another small miracle, in the release of the eddying spirals of millions of bubbles that will one day thrill our palates and lighten our spirits.

Outside, in the vineyards, the vines – as if in sympathy with the surrounding gloom – are in a death-like slumber.

They will remain that way until the cold finally loosens its grip and the pruning starts, in March, before the onset of spring and the swelling of new buds.

By then it will be one year since we wrote our first ‘Vineyards and Coronavirus’ diary entry.

Who would have thought…?!

Like you, we remain isolated in our bubble, but as we look out through the mists of the current pandemic, and across the dreary terrain of lockdown, we do so in the knowledge that the sunlit uplands lie ahead.

By spring new shoots will be curling along the trellis wires. Last year’s wine – like a brilliant child – will be lying safely on its lees, developing its own unique and beguiling aromas, and the first steps towards the end of lockdown will be in train.

It is now just a matter of time before we are once again mixing with friends and family, eating and drinking, dancing, travelling, celebrating or simply sitting rapt, once more, at theatres, in churches, at concerts.

And if proof were needed that from adversity comes new growth, look no further than the launch of ‘Glass Half Full’.

Led by Tristram Coates, ‘Glass Half Full’ is the re-incarnation of the sales and marketing team at Coates & Seely into a fully independent sales and marketing company. It is now dedicated not only to that function for Coates & Seely, but to that of a number of other exciting, high-growth drinks brands.

Conceived in lockdown and bolstered by the appointment of a further four talented partners, ‘Glass Half Full’ formally launches next Monday, January 18^th – otherwise known as ‘Blue Monday’, supposedly the most depressing day of the year – which, by dint of their infectious optimism and undeniable talents, will instead be turned into a day of celebration.

Proof that from adversity comes new growth.

www.ghfdrinks.com

A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OUR FRIENDS OF COATES & SEELY!