English red wine is hard to get right and this blend of Regent, Rondo and Triomphe D’Alsace grapes gives it quite a rustic taste and aroma, quite farmyeard on the nose and smokey and woody finish on the taste.
Its pretty light and very low tannins. This is either an acquired taste wine or one to drink with food.
Saint Péray, Grain de Silex, 2015, Rhone, France
I do like a Rhône valley white but this one from Saint Peray has passed its best though, which is a shame because you can still taste what was.
You get hints of ripe citrus, grapefruit with honey on the nose and with flavours that follow on with peach, almond, melon with buttery notes and a grown up feel. It’s a very acidic wine dry but with good body and I suspect if I had drank this after 2 or 3 years from bottling it would have been a really excellent wine. So lesson learnt, don’t save what you think is great wine too long.
New Hall, Barons Red, 2018, England
New Hall in Chelmsford, Essex make a lot of wine. This red is a blend Pinot Noir, Acolon and Rhondo grapes. It’s a reasonably simple wine, dry with red fruit aromas and sour cherry flavour with an oak under note.
For an English red wine this is very good, easy drinking with decent flavour and £11 a bottle. Sure go to £25 a bottle and you can get Gusbournes Pinot Noir which is excellent but this is much easier on the pocket and very good.
Winemakers and wine sellers evening – wines drunk
Each year we invite a few winemakers and people in the wine industry for a bit of food, drink.and possibly intelligent conversation, or at least conversation! In past years this has included people from the Decanter magazine, winemakers and wine sellers. Usually we have some English wine, unusual wine, weird wine and crackingly good wine. This evening was no different. Above are the wines drunk. For food we had tapas style food, breads, pates, fish, meat and cheese selections.
Going from left to right we started with Mexican sparkling wine made with Macabeu (a spanish grape), Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc. A little sweet for my taste but more of the Macabeu grape character coming through. It got a bronze medal at the Decanter World Wine Awards. Next was Bethnal Bubbles from a winery in Bethnal Green, east end of London. Some said weird, I said “oooohhhhh, it’s weird” unfiltered sparkling with a hoppy taste and green apple notes. At £23 a bottle it’s a good party conversation piece but not one I’ll get.
Then we went through some English white wines, light and fruity with lots of citrus. The Toppesfield vineyard 2018 Bacchus was excellent, I tried it just after bottling and thought they over extracted, a few months on and the wine is tasting much better with much more fruit. The Ashdown Estate from Bluebell vineyard white was lighter but very drinkable.
The Alsace Schlumberger Grand Cru 2014 Riesling. Full rich flavours of citrus, peach, lychee and a smell of petroleum, magnificent. Burnt Foot Pinot Noir rose followed. Good red fruit flavours and one of the better Pinot Noir wines from the UK.
Next was King Coel red, 20 year old English red that tasted fresh and had vibrant red fruit flavours. For me the highlight as it was under the winemakers stairs for much of that time, please see the blog for a write up. The Potash vineyard red was only 7 years old! but had lost some of its fruit flavours, drinkable but one wine to slip and not knock back, so to enjoy the flavours. A South Africa red followed, Lemberg-Louis 2016 made with Shiraz, Mourvedre and Granache, richer red fruit flavours with black cherry and higher tannins, excellent with the meat course.
The last wines were 2 late bottle vintage ports, grahams 2005 and Quinta Sta Eufemia 2019, both excellent ruby ports with rich fruit and smooth finish were drunk with the cheese course and on their own and finally we had a Czech desert wine, Pechor Vinarstvi 2015 Ryzlink Rynsky, light and full of citrus flavour.
The next afternoon the ones that stayed and had a midd BBQ felt the long night!
The afternoon after the evening
This weekend I meet up with one of the finest wine makers in the country, possibly the world.
Mary Mudd was the owner of what is now Dedham Vale vineyard, was Carter’s vineyard untill 2001. Made with mainly the Rondo grape with a bit of Dunkelfelder and Dornfelder this was one of her last vintages. Stored under her stairs for nearly all of that time it was soft in texture with a hint of tannins. A chunk of red fruit and still after all that time quite wonderful. The fact that 20 years on it was so drinkerable is a testament to her skill as a wine maker and that great wine can be made in the UK.
King Coel – 20 year old English Red wine