English Wine Festival 2006
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English Wine Festival 2006 |
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English Wine Festival 2006Shame it rained. One of the pleasures of the English Wine Festival is relaxing on the lawn listening to Something Cool, something cool in hand. This year it wasn't to be. But the warm welcome at the English Wine Centre helped to make up for it. How does it work? Your ticket - £13.50 on the gate or £10 in advance - gets you a wine glass and a programme and the opportunity to taste the couple of hundred wines on offer at the Festival. Whether you like dry white wine, fizz, red wine, oaked wine or dessert wine you'll find something to your taste - all made from grapes grown here in England. You can chat to the grape growers and winemakers who man the stalls, and of course they are only too happy to sell you a bottle or two to take home. Other stalls were selling everything from speciality olive oil to strawberry tarts (delicious). |
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English Wine - GrowingHow's this for a nice idea: you buy a house that happens to have a 2 acre private vineyard attached, decide to exploit it commercially and win two prizes for your second vintage? Doug and Kay Macleod lovingly tended and handpicked their grapes and shipped them to Rothersfield where winemaker Will Davenport weaved his magic to produce a Schonburger/Seyval that won a Bronze at another show, and the Gap 2004 that won first prize for the best oaked wine here at the English Wine Festival. Doug and Kay are near Horsham with its wine-friendly climate. But a 7,000 vine vineyard north of York? That's what Stuart Smith has just planted, and having supplied vines to UK vineyards since 1983 he should know what he's doing. And it's not just white varieties such as Ortega and Solaris that make up this mostly organic vineyard: Regent and Rondo, both reds, feature prominently too. |
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English Wine - Sparkling WineMuch of the production - the first vintage is scheduled for 2008 - will go to make sparkling wine. Apparently good "Champagne" is made from grapes high in acidity which means a crop less ripe than would go into, say, a full bodied belter of a red wine. So a more northerly latitude is just what is needed. They say farmers have to diversify to survive these days. But a sugar beet farmer switching to growing grapes? That's just what one farmer is doing. And Nyetimber vineyard in Sussex - famed for its medal winning sparkling wines - is rumoured to be planting a further hundred acres of the classic Champagne varieties Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier. Indeed the Champagne varieties seem to be the most popular plantings at the moment with new vineyards springing up all over the country to try and slake the seemingly unquenchable thirst for English fizz. |
One visitor I bumped into wasn't very happy with the £13.50 entrance fee. He contrasted it with the £2 entrance fee at the Brighton Food Fair where there are many more stalls. But does one get unlimited wine tasting and a fine jazz band at Brighton?
Another visitor observed that in earlier years the entrance also included tutored wine tasting, cheese tasting and cookery demonstrations - enjoyable on a sunny day, invaluable on a rainy one. Though to squeeze these in at the English Wine Centre would probably imply colonising the staff car park.
Big vineyards such as Carr Taylor and Denbies were absent from the Festival this year. However it was nice to see
new vineyards such as Warnham Vale exhibiting their wares and one hopes that more new vineyards will
come along next year.
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Had it been sunny the throng would have been outside enjoying Something Cool's irresistible blend of groovy jazz and foot-tapping swing but it was a bit too cool and wet for that this year, though the band gamely moved indoors later in the day to entertain the damp and dwindling punters.
So far 2006 has been a good year for grape growing - warm and dry in June and July with some rain recently
to fill out the grapes. If September and October prove to be warm and not too wet, 2006 should be a good
vintage. One tip for any amateur winemaker who, like me, has been struggling to emulate the professionals
and make good Pinot Noir: ferment on the skins for 3 weeks, stir several times a day,
keep the must warm (around 26C) and sealed from the air. Advice courtesy of Bookers who should know - their
excellent Pinot Noir won first prize.
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Mary Mudd sampling the competition.
Carter's King Coel won second prize for red wine. |
And Booker's Pinot Noir took first prize.
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Biddenden won best wine in show for their Ortega Dry.
Presented by Martyn Doubleday. |
Kemp's Bacchus was judged best sparkling wine
beating some renowned competition. |
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Chevalier de St Bacchus
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Tarts galore
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Something Cool's drummer heading for something warmer.
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Very tasty
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So this is how the wine is made...
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Delicious
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The English Wine Festival 2007 will be held on September 22nd & 23rd 2007 at Glynde Place near Lewes.
I hope you enjoy the English Wine Festival as much as we did.
Who am I? Just a visitor to the festival:
Mike at hraconsulting-ltd.co.uk (please replace "at" with "@")
