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A team from Britain’s Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA) went to Paris and invited some of the biggest names in the French restaurant and bar trade to a blind tasting involving English sparkling wines and champagnes. In the first tasting of its kind in Paris, those taking part said the English sparkling wine was better in two out of three categories, and it drew with the champagne in the third.
Sussex is gaining a lot of popularity in UK with the local producers even insisting for a special category/appellation for wines from this region. Nyetimber 2009 sparkling wine produced in West Sussex was a clear winner. Nine members of the 14 member panel thought the wine costing £40 was better than a £65 bottle of Billecart-Salmon Grand Cru champagne.
When a £38 bottle of Gusborne Rosé 2011 was pitted against a Ayala Majeur Rosé NV from Champagne, 9 members preferred Gusborne while only 5 picked the champagne. Half the tasters thought the sparkling wine was actually a champagne! The experts’ view was echoed by ordinary Parisians who had been also invited to taste and found the Nyetimber sparkling wine better.
"We couldn’t have expected the tasting to go so well," said Matthew Jukes, the British wine expert and author who organised the historic event, at Juveniles restaurant in central Paris. “In all my years writing about wine, I never would have believed that top French palates would take English sparkling wine for Champagne – it really is immensely exciting," he said after the tasting that was conducted day before yesterday, on April 20.
Nyetimber Classic Cuvee 2009 had been declared the Best English Sparking Wine at the International Wine Challenge Awards in 2014 a couple of months before its release in the market. Charles Metcalfe co-chairman of the IWC had then said,: ”Each year our English winemakers are going from strength to strength, and these gold medal winners are fantastic. The conditions in England’s Southern counties are perfect for creating excellent sparkling wines, and drinkers are increasingly discovering that our local vineyards have plenty to offer.”
England’s increasingngly warm climate and its chalky soils are ideal for producing bubbly, and now the French have also started to admit. In fact, the soil in East Sussex is identical to the soil in Champagne, as close as 170 kms away. The rising temperatures in northern Europe mean the area now enjoys the same climate as the northern France region did three decades ago, according to Telegraph. In fact Tattinger made history by buying land 170 acres of land in Kent last year. The renowned Champagne house plans to make sparkling wine there in partnership with British firm Hatch Mansfield.
Although English wines still account for around 1% of wine sales in the UK but the growth has been phenomenal and the existing production of 5 million bottles is expected to double in another 4 years.
When Jukes came up with the idea of taking the English wines to Paris, he had no idea that the English sparklers would do so well against champagne , similar to when Steven Spurrier who was a wine merchant in 1976 when he conducted the tastings that became historical and became known as Judgment of Paris 1976.
It may be a while before people accept this as the ‘Bubbly Judgement of Paris 2016’ and there might be critique and comments in the pipeline, but for now the Brits are enjoying the moments of bubbly glory.
Source: Various UK Media Sources
Subhash Arora
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