Balfour Brut Rosé: 20 years at the vanguard of English sparkling wine

Spring was in the air as we walked through bluebell-covered, ancient oak woodland deep in the heart of the Kent countryside. Richard Balfour-Lynn pointed at the bramble which had grown on patches of land where old trees had fallen, allowing sunshine to filter through. ‘That’s the natural cycle, here,’ he said.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of 12 Balfour Brut Rosé wines

Just moments ago, we were in the state-of-the-art winery of Balfour, Hush Heath Estate. Its visitor centre-come-restaurant is also a showroom of the proprietors’ art collection, which ranges from a four-piece set of ancient Chinese landscape paintings to a funky, scarlet fibreglass sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi, iPod in hand.

The story of Balfour

Sitting directly opposite this very modern winery, across a field of young vines, is Hush Heath Manor which can be traced back to 1503.

The Tudor house was bought by property tycoon Richard Balfour-Lynn as a family home in 1986. In 2001, the surrounding 162ha of land, which was once a working farm, was put up for auction and the family seized on the opportunity.

Besides apple orchards for ciders, the family planted wildflower meadows and maintained the ancient forest on the outskirts of the estate, now home to fallow deer, buzzards and barn owls.

With a mutual passion for wine and inspired by their favourite Champagne, Billecart-Salmon’s Brut Rosé, Richard and his wife, Leslie, established Balfour Winery in 2002. The venture was built on a simple business plan: ‘if we can’t sell it, we’ll drink it,’ they say. Owen Elias, then head winemaker at Chapel Down, was invited on board to turn their dream into reality.

Curious, ambitious, and keen to create something different, the award-winning Elias started off with two hectares of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, planted in Wealden clay soils in the Oast House Meadow vineyard near the manor.

In 2003, an experimental batch of 1,000 bottles showed promise and led to the first commercial vintage of Balfour Brut Rosé the following year..

Elias’ non-malolactic style combined with young vines and a hot year lead to immediate success and a sign of things to come – the 2007 vintage was chosen as the only English wine to be served at the 2012 London Olympics.

A formidable team

For the first six years, Brut Rosé was the only wine produced by Balfour, with its 2010 being not only the first vintage made exclusively on the estate from start to finish, but also the year which saw Owen being joined by his son, Fergus, for the first time.

Fergus Elias spent many of his childhood days among the vines at Chapel Down, and although he originally trained in law, he decided to return to his winemaking roots, joining Balfour permanently in 2014.

After completing an MSc in Viticulture and Oenology, and working as an assistant winemaker for three years, Fergus became head winemaker at Balfour in 2019 – one of the youngest winemakers in England to take on such a major role.

Vineyard manager Cathy Turner and her team of growers have been here since there were a mere nine rows of vines. At one point, the growers experimented with grafting vines to apple orchards, hoping to pick grapes at the same height as apples. Although the ‘Grapple’ project didn’t work out in the end, they have built up a keen knowledge of the estate’s many micro-plots of vines, each featuring its own particular climate and maturing schedules.

Unsurprisingly, this means that each parcel needs to be harvested at just the right time, however this in turn facilitates the small-batch approach in the winery where micro-blending is a keyword – a pair of four-tonne presses allow the father and son winemaking team to adjust the blend according to vintage conditions.

Today, land under vine at Balfour has reached just over 80ha, including the three most famous Champagne grapes as well as lesser-known varieties including Pinot Blanc, Petit Meslier and Arbanne. Balfour also works with other Kent vineyards for varied fruit expression from green sand and calcareous soils.

Two decades since its advent, Balfour Winery now produces over 400,000 bottles of still and sparkling wines each year. The signature Brut Rosé, however, is still sourced almost entirely from the original Oast House Meadow vineyard, where it all began.

Balfour Brut Rosé: The vertical verdict

Non-malolactic winemaking is, without doubt, one of the core identities of Balfour Brut Rosé, and one that certainly benefits extended ageing under cork. However, the tasting also provided a rare opportunity to compare recently disgorged 2008, 2011 and 2014 against the same vintages aged under cork.

Freshness, purity and zesty citrus bite were better kept in the recently disgorged bottles. However, on almost every occasion, the cork-aged editions showed a far more complex and interesting spectrum of flavours. By retaining the crunchy acidity, which regularly hits 9g/l, the sparkling rosé develops a complex bouquet of tertiary characters without losing its vibrancy and charm, even long after disgorgement.

Tasted nearly two decades later, the inaugural 2004 vintage was vivid testimony to how English sparkling rosé can age gracefully.

Its razor-sharp acidity shines through a full-on flavour profile developed in bottle, featuring bruised apple, savoury brioche, burnt sugar, zingy orange peel and a silky layer of caramel on the palate, followed by a long, lightly spiced finish.

Equally impressive was the 2005 vintage which won a Regional Trophy at the 2009 Decanter World Wine Awards. The tasting note from the judges then recorded its ‘delicate perfume of fresh strawberry, quince and blossom; crisply elegant with a prominent mousse’.

While the fresh red fruit characters may have faded today, the wine has developed a savoury edge of salted nuts and mushrooms, in addition to layers of oxidised fruits, and the vibrancy on the attack still lives.

A wealth of autolytic characters was the dominant theme of the cork-aged 2008 vintage. The 2011 was more sweet-spiced, with cinnamon-dusted apple pie on the nose and a lingering, nutty finish. 2014, meanwhile, displayed a honeyed, biscuity nose and ripe fruits on the palate.

Red fruit characters became more apparent in the 2018 vintage, the youngest release of Balfour Brut Rosé. Born in a vintage praised as one of the best for English wines in the modern era, the 2018 is slightly lower in acidity (7g/l) and has a higher proportion of Pinot Meunier (30%) than the estate’s average.

The 2018 is already approachable with its floral summer berries and honeyed yellow fruits on the palate. Its bright green-fruit acidity, however, suggests that it has a promising journey ahead, just like its predecessors.

Balfour Brut Rosé: 2004 to 2018

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