AXA head to make English sparkling wines

AXA wine boss Christian Seely has set up his own English sparkling wine venture.

Seely, managing director of prestigious estates including Château Pichon-Longueville Baron and Quinta do Noval, has co-founded Seely & Coates Wines – with business partner Nick Coates, an old friend – as an independent project.

A small parcel of wine will be made this year. Seely told decanter.com, ‘We are kitting out a winery on site and will vinify the first wine this year and it will be released in time for Christmas 2011.’

The Hampshire vineyard has five hectares of Pinot Noir and German varieties and a further seven hectares have been planted in the chalky soils with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir this spring. It is estimated total production capacity could reach 60,000-70,000 bottles in the future.

Seely’s wife Corinne, a former winemaker at Domaine de Chevalier in the Graves and a white wine specialist, will make the base wines. Consultants brought in from Champagne will oversee the sparkling process.

Seely added, ‘We would like to make a white and a rosé sparkling wine with both a non- vintage cuvée and a vintage cuvée that stays on its lees longer.’

‘People will be able to buy online and we will hope to sell as much as can to private customers. When the time comes, we will look for a distributor to get the wines into top-end restaurants and hotels.’

The company also hopes to build a cellar door to welcome tourists in the future

Written by Rebecca Gibb

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Rebecca Gibb MW is a wine journalist and editor who has also founded Bamboozled games, ‘the world’s first wine and spirit puzzle makers’. Having spent six years living in New Zealand, she has recently returned to her native north-east England. While in New Zealand, she became a Master of Wine, graduating top of her class and winning the Madame Bollinger medal for excellence in tasting. A former winner of both the UK’s young wine writer of the year and the Louis Roederer Emerging Wine Writer, her first book The Wines of New Zealand was published in 2018. She also runs wine events and has her own consultancy business The Drinks Project. She was a judge at the 2019 Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA).