The only wine is Essex
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
California’s Jackson Family Wines owns more than 40 prime estates from Napa to Saint-Émilion. So its recent announcement of a new wine project in Essex was considered a curveball by some. For this clay-bound county in south-east England is often better known for being the butt of jokes than a seat for vines – but the growing consensus is that “England’s Côte-d’Or” is now producing some of its best still wines.
Its vinous epicentre is the Crouch Valley, just to the north of the meandering River Crouch. It’s here that winemaker JFW will be planting 65 acres of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. (The first wines – name to be confirmed – won’t be released until at least 2028, but there may be some wines made with local fruit released before then.) “When we ran the numbers for sunshine hours, warmth and rainfall, they were just off the scale,” says Charlie Holland, the British winemaker formerly of Gusbourne in Kent who’s heading JFW’s Essex venture. “You get lots of nice dry weather, particularly in the autumn, which is crucial for ripening still-wine grapes.” It was the wines of nearby Danbury Ridge that convinced him of the area’s potential. “2021 was the litmus test – it proved you could make great wines there, even in a difficult year.”
Like JFW, Danbury Ridge is a family business, albeit on a smaller scale. Owners Michael and Heather Bunker, and their daughters Janine and Sophie, are originally from the local resort town of Southend-on-Sea. It was a friend who suggested the retired investment banker Bunker plant vines on his 28 acres of land in 2014. The real breakthrough wine for Danbury Ridge was the velvety 2018 Pinot Noir.
Standing in the box-fresh winery, I taste the new 2021 Chardonnay (£40, thefinestbubble.com), a luscious, almost tropical white with a perky acidity and subtle saltiness; and the fantastic 2021 Pinot Noir (£42, thefinestbubble.com) that has a concentration and elegance still rare in English reds. There is a single-vineyard Chardonnay called Octagon Block, which is designed for longer cellaring. I also had a preview of Solstice, which will be Danbury’s stab at a sparkling.
Blackbook Winery I’d Rather be a Rebel rosé 2020, £20.50
Riverview chardonnay 2021, £36
Like many vineyards in the Crouch Valley, Danbury Ridge was planted by the roving vineyard manager Duncan McNeill. “Over the past 10 years, my business has been growing so fast it’s almost frightening,” he says. “A lot of arable farmers are switching to growing grapes because it’s much more lucrative.” Crouch Valley fruit can fetch up to 60 per cent more than the average sparkling grape, he says. And it’s increasingly sought after by wineries across the UK – one that makes a feature of it is urban Blackbook Winery. Next year, Essex will get a fillip with the launch of one big new contract winery. An insider even claims that “five or six big names in Burgundy” have been making enquiries.
The young Riverview estate, to the south of the River Crouch, is also promising. Its transparent Riverview Pinot Noir 2021 (£36) was a standout for me at a recent WineGB tasting. I take a tour of the vineyard with its Essex-born owner Katie Yesil and her Londoner husband Umut. “We were going to do sparkling,” laughs the 30-year-old, “but then we were told the grapes were too good to waste!” I return to London full of high hopes for the future of English wine and with boots caked in Essex clay.
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