Fizzy Fox

Today I tried Fox & Fox Mayfield Tradition 2014 Blanc de Noirs. It gets style points for the embossed fox on the neck foil - very cute. I really enjoyed the flavor, tart grapes and sour cherries, a bit of ripe apple, and just a touch of shortcrust pastry to balance the fruit. It was fizzy rather than bubbly, but it had loads of fizz that lasted through the glass and to the end of the bottle. This is a very fun English sparkler, one that I would drink again and would recommend to others.

A number of notes

I'm behind in my blogging, so here are notes on a few bottles we've had over the past weeks, lots of English sparklers: Hundred Hills Blanc de Blanc 2017 - fantastic, tart, fresh-lemon flavor, incredibly refreshing. Sadly, not enough bubbles, a very light fizz, but not enough to justify the price of this bottle. Rathfinny Blanc de Noirs 2016 - lots of orchard fruit flavors, crunchy tart apples, juicy ripe plums. This wine had the bare minimum of bubbles that I find acceptable in a sparkling wine, so I would buy this again. Roebuck Estates Classic Cuvee 2014 - a very strong and crisp bramley apple flavor, loads of bubbles. This was good with food (we were eating dim sum with it), but it might have been a little too one-note and heavy to enjoy on its own. Coates & Seely Rose NV - This is a favorite that we discovered when we lived in the UK 10 years ago. It was just as lovely as we remembered. Very fine and plentiful bubbles, lots of summer fruit but not sweet, and a crisp finish. I'm so excited to be able to buy this wine again.

Thank you, Pride Parade

It's been years since I posted...but I'm back where the blog started, in a country where the bubbles are interesting and the options plentiful. So, it's time to start tracking what we're drinking again. This weekend held unexpected surprises. We were trying to go shopping on Saturday, but needed to cross Piccadilly to get to the store. Little did we know there would be one million people in London for the Pride parade that took place on...Picadilly. GO PRIDE! But not so great for our shopping venture, as we couldn't get across the street and we were on a schedule. My brillant husband turned us back toward Hedonism Wines, a shop I had never visited. Fabulous place, incredible selection of bubbles. Instead of buying the tie that he needed, we ended up with a case of bubbles instead. As we were paying, I noticed their refrigerator case had half bottles of bubbles. While we can't remember whose idea this was, we decided to buy a half bottle of Mestres Visol cava to drink while we walked. Hey, it was Pride weekend, the two of us drinking cava out of the bottle while we walked up the street didn't attract the slightest bit of attention. We had high hopes, as the person who rang us up at the shop had told us that the Mestres brand was highly regarded in the world of cava. We didn't love it, though, as it was very heavy, with what I can only describe as an unclean taste. It had a little fizz to start, but didn't hold it's bubbles. I'm a little nervous, as we bought a bottle of the Mestres Rose in our case. Fingers crossed that we enjoy that one a little more. To make up for our disappointment, when we got home, we opened a bottle of Digby Leander Pink that I had purchased on sale at Waitrose for GBP24. We loved it. Crunchy, crisp red fruit, not at all sweet. Plentiful bubbles that lasted. I was pleased, as I knew nothing about the wine when I purchased it, and it was surprisingly good and great value for the price. Looking forward to trying more from this maker.

And The Winner Is...

We managed to save the best of the case from Sparkling English Wine till last...having liked the English Oak Chinkapin rose, we had set aside the Engelmann from the same producer. Smart move, as this bottle was really nice.

The wine is a traditional chardonnay, pinot noir, pinot meunier blend. It smelled yeasty and champagne-like, and tasted of toast and citrus fruits, with just a touch of vanilla on the finish. It had good bubbles, too. We really enjoyed it and thought it was well worth the £25 price.

Well done English Oak, I'll be drinking more of your wines...

More Bad British

Two more from the Sparkling English Wine case that we didn't like:

The first was another 'undrinkable', Daws Hill 2008 Vintage Brut, a chadonnay, auxerrois, pinot noir, and pinot meunier blend. It surprised me how much I disliked this wine as it's been winning medals in UK sparkling wine competitions. But I guess now I know how seriously to take the awards that are being issued within the UK. This smelled of unwashed socks and stinky cheese, and had some really unripe and dirty green flavours to it that mercifully disappeared almost immediately from the tongue, leaving nothing behind. Because it's such a fleeting moment of bad and then nothing, you could use this sparkling wine for cocktails (which is what we did with part of it) - but for what this wine costs, you'd be better off buying a decent cava for a third of the price.

The second was another 'too sweet', Plumpton Estate The Dean, a pinot noir/chardonnay blend. This wine had overripe apple flavours with a bitter, burnt-nut finish, not very well balanced and too sweet for my taste. If you're still interested in trying it, you can buy it for a couple of pounds less through Waitrose Wine than I bought it for through Sparkling English Wines.

Drinkable

And now I'm happy to report on three wines from Sparkling English Wine that were entirely drinkable!! None of them have any finish, but that could almost be a plus, considering how overly sour or sweet the other bottles of wine from this case that we've tried have been.

The first was a rose - English Oak Chinkapin, a blend of chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot meunier. It tasted of tart red berries, slightly under-ripe strawberries and red currants. I'm pleased that I bought a white version from this maker, I'm saving it as the last bottle to try from the case in the hope that it also doesn't disappoint.

The next was Upperton 2009 Nebula. Undoing the trend in my last post of not really liking the chardonnay/pinot noir blends, this was a pinot noir/chardonnay blend! It smelled of grapefruit and mint, with more orchard fruit flavours. Even though I know I'm not supposed to be influenced by these things, I liked the naming and labeling of this wine.

The last was Jenkyn Place 2008 Brut, a chardonnay, pinot noir, pinot meunier blend. This was the most champagne-like of the wines we've tried from this case, smelling and tasting of lemon drop candies. It had the best balance between sweet and tart, and if this had a decent finish, it would be a really good sparkling wine instead of just a drinkable one.

Notably, all of the wines had decent bubbles, always a good thing for me!

Too Sweet

Anyone who reads my blog will know...I'm not a fan of sweet champagnes. For those of you who are, two of the bottles from the case I ordered from Sparkling English Wine might suit you. The first was Meonhill Reserve, the other was Gaultsbrook 2009 from Albourne Vineyard, both chardonnay/pinot noir blends. They were overwhelmingly sweet on the finish, not something I would drink again.

Someone recently asked me if I was being too hard on the English producers, so while I was at my local deli, I thought I would pick up a bottle of the prosecco they carry. It's not something that would have tempted me before, but since I had bought a case of English sparklers that I had never heard of just to try them, why shouldn't I do the same with prosecco? This one was from Zonin, equally as 'too sweet' as the English wines above, but for around half the price. So it was at least a better value of disappointment.

And to finish off my too-sweet critique, I recently tried a bottle of American sparkling wine, the XD-NV from Laetitia Vineyard, again, another chardonnay/pinot noir blend. I had purchased the bottle to try with a friend named Laetitia, and we both found it very sweet, tasting of overly-ripe apples. I had hoped it would be something we both loved, but I knew it was a long shot as many American sparklers are too sweet for my taste.

Hmmm...perhaps I should avoid the chardonnay/pinot noir blends...there seems to be a theme here??

Better, But Not Great

We tried another of the wines we got from Sparkling English Wine. This was Court Garden 2009 Classic Cuvee, a traditional blend of chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot meunier. While this was better than the last two bottles of English bubbles that we tried, it still wasn't great.

On the plus side...it had plenty of bubbles. It smelled like grape soda, which both appealed to and worried me as I like grape soda, but find it very sweet. The wine itself wasn't too sweet, though, tasting of lemons and mint, with a touch of buttered toast.

The down side was a big one, though, as the wine was again incredibly acidic and somewhat bitter on the finish. We're just finding no balance so far in this batch of English sparkling wines, which is really discouraging as we keep hearing the PR about what great quality wines the UK-based makers are producing, but it's not consistently been our experience.

Like the others, this bottle was around the £20 mark (surprisingly, it was a couple of quid less expensive on the Sparkling English Wines website than on Court Garden's website), which I again thought was overpriced for the wine.

Three down, nine more to go...

Waiting to be Wow'ed

I've been on the hunt for some new kinds of bubbles to try, and came across the Sparkling English Wine website, which does what it says on the tin. It has a very large range of sparkling English wines on offer, with delivery free if you order 12 bottles. I ordered a mixed dozen from makers that I didn't know. This was rather brave of me, as the wine isn't cheap, with most bottles in the £20 or more price range. I still think English producers are rather cheeky in their pricing - they know that most people think that expensive = good quality. I know better, but took the risk anyway.

Two bottles in and I'm disappointed, not seeing a payoff on my risk yet. The first bottle we tried was the Danebury Cossack 2004, which is a blend of auxerrois and rulander grapes. I can only hope that the bottle I bought was off, as it was entirely undrinkable. It smelled like the damp sponge that sits next to my sink combined with overly cooked green veg, with a distinct hit of asparagus. It didn't taste much better, with an acidity that made my stomach churn. £20 poured down the sink.

The next bottle was somewhat better, although not by much. This was Terlingham Rose 2010, a classic blend of chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot meunier grapes. It smelled of tart red fruits, currants and cranberry, with just a touch of yeastiness. It had some of the sweetness of the red fruit on the tongue, although again this was overwhelmed by the acidity of the wine. It was drinkable, but completely overpriced at another £20 for the bottle. There are nicer sparkling wines out there at half the price.

Hopefully there's something in that case that will wow me...

Postscript...a couple of weeks later, I noticed I had a bottle of Terlingham Rose 2009 in the case. I was surprised I had ordered two different vintages from the same maker, it's not like me, but I was quite busy when I placed the order and received the case, so I didn't check either through as thoroughly as usual. The wine wasn't much different from the 2010, though, still a strong acidity, so I used most of it to make a pot of chili rather than drink it.