UK sparkling wine tasting highlights challenge to high street Champagne
March 10, 2008
By Oliver Styles
English sparkling wine has shown that it has the potential to challenge highstreet Champagne, a Decanter tasting has proved.
In the first tasting of its kind at Decanter, over 60 sparkling wines from England, Wales and the Channel Islands were tasted by some of the world's pre-eminent critics.
Decanter's contributing editor Steven Spurrier drew positive comparisons with Champagne in the 1970s.
'Very encouraging,' said Spurrier. 'A generation ago, Champagne was dodgy. Here, 90% of the wines were drinkable – not the case in Champagne in the 70s.'
'If you had to say it, there were certainly a dozen with a good Champagne comparison,' said Oz Clarke. 'But I marked wines up if they had “Englishness” – a lovely hedgerow style and grassyness.'
The top three wines overall were Theale Vineyard Founder's Reserve 2003, Meopham Valley rose and Plumpton Estate's The Dean, in that order.
The tasters included UK wine expert Stephen Skelton MW, Champagne specialist Tom Stevenson, Oz Clarke, Benoit Gouez (chef de caves at Moet & Chandon), Waitrose's Dee Blackstock MW, award-winning wine writer and Decanter columnist Andrew Jefford and Decanter's contributing editor Steven Spurrier.
For added interest, three non-vintage, high street Champagnes and one Sparkling wine from Napa were included in the line-up, which was tasted blind.
Duval-Leroy was the top-scoring Champagne, ranked joint seventh overall. It was beaten by UK offerings from Camel Valley, Ridgeview, Nytimber, Denbies and Balfour vineyards.
Although all agreed that the tasting was 'encouraging', Skelton, who chaired the tasting as research for his forthcoming book, said there were problems.
'Acidity was always a problem with English sparkling wines and I don't see that improving,' he said. 'That was the real problem with the good wines.'
Despite a rose wine coming second, he said there 'certainly were some horrors [in the category].'
He added that in many cases producers had 'jumped on the [sparkling wine] bandwagon'. Others agreed, citing winemaking faults and a lack of elegance in some wines.
'Some from the non-champagne varieties would have been better without the bubbles,' said Stevenson.
'I was hoping we'd got over this,' said Jefford, who terminated on a more positive note. 'There were some quite good wines,' he added. 'We should keep trying. Had we done this 10 years ago, it would have a lot worse.'
Stephen Skelton MW, is updating his UK Vineyard Guide this year. It is expected to be published in April.
Full results and more analysis of the tasting will be published in the July issue of Decanter magazine, out June 4.
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Wouldn't it have made it much fairer if it was a more even number of champagne and its rivals? Maybe 10 champagnes, 10 from the UK, and 10 others such as prosecco and cava? It seems a bit weird to have the UK as a 'Champagne rival' if it was only up against 3 from the original region.
Nik B, London, UK
It wasn't meant to be a “them and us” tasting but an overall view of where UK-grown sparkling wine has got. The 4 non-UK-grown wines were there merely to see if they showed up as being different, better etc. (they didn't). I would happily pitch the top ten UK wines from yesterday against ten Champagnes in the same price bracket.
Stephen Skelton MW
I disagree Stephen, the Champagnes did stand out. First, let's cut this tasting in half. Every taster present has a right to their own opinion, and mine as demonstrated by the scores given at the time, was that out of the 35 sparkling wines made from "non Champagne varieties", only one rated 14 (three stars or good) and four as 13 (two stars or fair), the rest were, in my opinion adequate or less, with no less than 21 rated 11 and below (poor to bad). There were some duds in the 37 sparkling wines made from Champagne varieties, but I was excited to find that I had scored 17 (four stars) or above for as many as 10 of the English sparkling wines, until, that is, I discovered that this included two of the three Champagnes. I was unaware of any "ringers" having been deployed in this tasting. I think that the inclusion of three volume-selling non-vintage Champagnes is more of a test on the tasters than the other wines, and I'm totally relaxed about that. One of the Champagnes was my equal second highest scoring wine of the tasting and described as "a classy wine"; the other came towards the bottom of my top 10 and was described as "attempting more complex style". Perhaps my guard was down. Perhaps I should have been looking for hidden Champagnes, but I'm happy to stand by my score and comments, even for the third one, which elicited a score of just 14 (two stars or fair) and the comment "Something odd here!"
Tom Stevenson
The most interesting comment of all came from Oz. He put his finger on the future of English fizz, and it's not about simply 'aping Champagne'. You're dead right Oz there is an 'Englishness', and we should celebrate it even in those English wines that use 'Champagne' varieties. 'Fruit forward' doesn't work in Champagne (obviously) but there is room for our subtle fruits and aromas in English fizz that Oz describes. Beating Duval Leroy in a blind tasting is not novel for us; it's happened before and the tasters knew that some were Champagne and some English. I agree with Stephen too, the less tasters know about a wine in advance, the better.
Bob Lindo, Camel Valley, UK
The two white Champagnes ranked 12th and 13th and the Napa sparkling wine ranked 16th. I don't call this “standing out”. I call this coming smack in the middle of wines made from the same varieties and in the same price bracket. The tasting showed exactly what the UK winegrowing community have been saying for ages: there are some very good, world-beating wines being made in the UK, the vast majority using the classic Champagne varieties; there is (unfortunately) a lot of dross out there, mainly being made from unsuitable varieties and one hopes that in time these will disappear and/or change.
Stephen Skelton MW
I don't know where you learned maths, Stephen, but neither 12th nor 13th comes "smack in the middle of wines made from the same varieties and in the same price bracket" when we tasted 37 such wines (72 in total when including those made with non Champagne varieties). I can only be held responsible for my own scores, which clearly placed Duval-Leroy equal 4th and Lanson Black Label equal 2nd (my ratings for the top 10 were spread over 4 scores, thus most positions were equal). I'm sorry that the panel as a whole did not see it that way. Not because I am not a supporter of English sparkling wine. I've probably had more published encouraging English sparkling wine than anyone. I'm sorry because we need to be realistic about precisely where English sparkling wine is today. Apart from a handful of producers, it's all about potential, and even those few producers know that their best wines are ahead of them. This is something that I believe the entire panel agreed, but is in danger of being overlooked due to all the unnecessary (and in my opinion untrue) hype about English sparkling wine trouncing Champagne. For me, only one English sparkling wine trounced the best of the two volume-selling non-vintage Champagne "ringers" and that was Nyetimber 2003 Blanc de Noirs (100% Pinot Meunier).
Tom Stevenson
With the greatest respect, isn't the whole point of a judging panel to iron out the preferences of one individual such as yourself? Whatever, judges think individually can't take away from the fact that lots of English wines scored better than the respected Champagne brands (bench marks) in the tasting overall. Don't forget that just about every English sparkling wine was included and not just the established brands, or selected few. Rejoice!
Bob Lindo, Camel Valley
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Wouldn't it have made it much fairer if it was a more even number of champagne and its rivals? Maybe 10 champagnes, 10 from the UK, and 10 others such as prosecco and cava? It seems a bit weird to have the UK as a 'Champagne rival' if it was only up against 3 from the original region.
