Prestige cuvées, but not Champagne – the super premium end of English sparkling wines

On hearing the term 'prestige cuvée', many seasoned wine lovers instantly think of the crown jewel of a Champagne house – the wine that represents the pinnacle of a producer's winemaking ambition.

Perhaps the most famous example is Dom Pérignon, Moët & Chandon's prestige cuvée, first released in 1936. Such bottlings are often associated with the finest vineyard sites, exceptional vintages – although some are released as non-vintage wines – and in many cases, collaborations with the worlds of art, fashion and luxury.

As English sparkling wine continues to gain recognition both at home and abroad, a new generation of prestige cuvées – some of England's leading estates and winemaking talents behind them – is on the rise.

May produced in small quantities and each with a story of its own, these English prestige cuvées naturally command premium prices (mostly £100 and above). But we managed to get hold of five – let's find out exactly what all the fuss is about.

Nyetimber: 1086 and 1086 Rosé

The unquestionable pioneer, Nyetimber was the first English wine estate to embrace Champagne’s prestige cuvée concept, releasing two premium sparkling wines – a white and a rosé – in 2018, priced at £150 and £175 respectively, on a par with premium Champagne.

The estate named the range ‘1086’ after the year the name ‘Nitimbreha’ – believed to mean ‘newly timbered house’ – first appeared in the Domesday Book, William the Conqueror’s great survey of landholdings across much of England and parts of Wales.

The ambition to produce a prestige cuvée came from Nyetimber’s proprietor, Eric Heerema, when he acquired the estate in 2006.

The winemaking team, led by head winemaker Cherie Spriggs, waited until the 2009 vintage – ‘a year that has all of the right stuff’, as Spriggs put it – to begin creating both the estate’s and England’s first prestige cuvée.

The 1086 wines are made from the finest grapes and parcels across Nyetimber’s estate vineyards in West Sussex, Hampshire and Kent, with the parcel selection and blend varying according to the vintage.

The estate highlighted extended ageing – seven years on lees as the baseline – as a ‘key marker’ of the 1086 range. The principal criteria for selecting a base wine capable of such a journey are not simply flavour, but ‘structure, balance and mouthfeel’, according to the producer.

The latest releases in the range are the 2014 white and 2016 rosé.

Our review

Chapel Down: Kit's Coty Coeur de Cuvée

Although not originally positioned as a prestige cuvée, Chapel Down's Kit's Coty Coeur de Cuvée, released in 2017, also sits comfortably among the pioneers of England's super-premium sparkling wines.

With the 2013 vintage as its first release, Coeur de Cuvée is a 100% Chardonnay sparkling wine sourced from the best parcels of the famed Kit's Coty vineyard – a roughly 40ha (100-acre), steep, south-facing chalk site on the North Downs of Kent.

As the name suggests, the base wine is made from the gently extracted 'heart' (coeur) of the first pressing and is aged in French oak. The current release (£126), from the 2016 vintage, spent seven years on lees.

The Kit's Coty vineyard is also home to DWWA-winning Blanc de Blancs and still wines including Bacchus (one of the most sophisticated expressions of the grape in England) and Chardonnay.

A major player in the English wine scene since the early 2000s, Chapel Down now makes wine, led by head winemaker Josh Donaghay-Spire, from its own vineyards in Kent while also sourcing grapes from Kent, Sussex and Essex.

Our review

Gusbourne: Fifty One Degrees North

The roots of Gusbourne’s late-release bottlings can be traced back to custodian Andrew Weeber, who decided to hold back some of the estate’s 2007 Blanc de Blancs.

The 2007 was eventually released in 2014, and the result encouraged the producer to pursue the idea further. The same year also delivered what the estate describes as a 'textbook' harvest, perfect for building a sparkling wine meant for extended ageing.

After 'eight years of tasting and monitoring behind the scenes', then-head winemaker Charlie Holland oversaw the launch of the estate's prestige cuvée, Fifty One Degrees North, in 2022, named after the latitude of its Kent and Sussex vineyards.

The inaugural release was a 2:1 blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, with 80 months of ageing on lees.

The following year, after Holland’s departure that summer, the estate – known for specialising in vintage releases – announced the second release of Fifty One Degrees North, from the 2016 vintage (£195).

Produced from a warm, dry growing season, the wine retained a similar blend to its predecessor, combining the ‘richness of fruit’ from Gusbourne's clay and sandstone vineyards in Kent with the bright freshness derived from the chalk and flint soils in West Sussex.

After a further two years of ageing, in autumn last year (2025), a magnum edition (£395) was released in small quantities.

This year, to mark Gusbourne's 20th vintage, the team – now led by winemaker Mary Bridges with Laura Rhys MS continuing as consultant and global ambassador – decided to release around 250 bottles from the estate’s library, including wines dating back more than two decades. Among the highlights were just four bottles of Blanc de Blancs from the inaugural 2006 vintage.

Our review

Langham: Perpetual

This is perhaps one of the most innovative entries in this line-up, created by Langham's talented young winemaker Tommy Grimshaw.

When Grimshaw took over as head winemaker in 2019, he inherited a demi-muid (600L) of the estate's top Chardonnay from the 2017 vintage, and a puncheon (about 500L) of the best fruit from the highly prized 2018 vintage.

Inspired by grower Champagne pioneer Anselme Selosse, Grimshaw decided to start creating a multi-vintage cuvée from Langham's 13.8ha (34-acre) vineyard, with its base wine aged in solera.

With top fruit from 2019 added, the reserve was transferred to a 2,000L Slavonian oak foudre (named 'Judy'), purchased by the estate in 2020. Since then, the Dorset-based producer has kept back barrels of the most expressive Chardonnay grown on its belemnite chalk vineyard from each vintage, building a 'perpetually evolving blend', as the winemaker puts it.

The first Perpetual Blanc de Blancs was bottled in 2020, followed by four years of lees ageing, with just 650 bottles released in June 2025.

This summer, Langham released the second bottling of its prestige cuvée – this time a blend of the 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 vintages (as shown on the label), finished with zero dosage and no sulphur.

Priced at £109.95, this is also the first Perpetual release made solely from the 2,000L Slavonian oak foudre, with the ambition to 'express Chardonnay beyond the boundaries of any individual vintage', said the producer.

Our review

Squerryes Estate: Patience

A relative newcomer to the league, Squerryes’s Patience 2014, named after the family ancestor Patience Warde (1629-1696), was just launched in July 2026.

Patience himself was a former Mayor of London and a successful merchant trading British wool for French wine, including Champagne, witnessing the rise of sparkling Champagne in the 17th century.

It was his legacy that eventually led to the purchase of the Kent estate in 1731. Nearly 300 years later, the Warde family still owns the 2,500-acre estate, including 21ha (55 acres) of south-facing vineyards near Westerham, close to the Pilgrims' Way.

The family only truly committed to winegrowing in 2006, two years after eighth-generation owner John Warde, who has a background in agriculture, was approached by a Champagne house searching for English chalk soils – a visit that drew his attention to the estate's potential for sparkling wine.

The estate has since developed a range of single-estate sparkling wines (many of which saw extended lees ageing) on the chalk soils at 140–170m altitude on the North Downs.

In 2013, John's son, ninth-generation owner Henry Warde, joined the estate and soon started preserving older vintages with the support of consultant Laura Evans MW.

More than a decade later, its prestige cuvée, Patience 2014, came to be. Described by the estate as its 'most characterful' and 'most considered' wine to date, it is an almost equal blend of the three Champagne varieties, although Warde believes future releases (with the 2015 and 2017 currently under review) will become increasingly Chardonnay-led.

Among the 3,000 bottles produced, the first tranche of 1,500 bottles are now available at £225 per bottle.

Our reivew

Super-premium English wine: more to come

Beyond these, the list of English prestige cuvée now also includes Sugrue South Downs' sold-out Cuvée Dr Brendan O'Regan (£125 per bottle), Exton Park's Cuvée M. Isaac Blanc de Blancs 'BBB' (£130), and Hattingley Valley's Kings Cuvée (£91).

Meanwhile, top producers are continuing to release highly selective, long-ageing bottlings such as Black Chalk's Eighty Nine Point Six 2020 (magnum, £165), not to mention an increasing number of rare library releases.

Although the concept of prestige cuvée is still relatively new to the English wine scene, and the ranks of this super-premium club remain small, there is little doubt that more are on the horizon.

Are they worth prices that rival the top end of Champagne? The quality and the ambition are certainly there. Whether they’re here to stay, is now up to wine lovers to decide.

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