Gold Medal and Summer Growth

Gold Medal and Summer Growth

Take a long holiday? Our vineyard has other ideas. This is a very busy time for us, with the vines revelling in this gorgeous weather, swelling their young grapes and reaching upwards with limitless enthusiasm…

Hello friends, and welcome back. We’re here with another update for you on life at our Eridge vineyard, so make yourself comfortable, it’s fika time.

First we must start with a vineyard update, the centre of our world: Well, each of the three classic varieties – Chardonnay, Pinot noir and Meunier – are now through flowering stage and are entering fruit set. So far, so very good.

At this time the vines are putting so much energy into the new fruit that they’re collecting all the nourishment they can from their environment – mainly sunshine. What does this mean? The leaves are going crazy, they’re everywhere. We’ll be trimming this weekend to stop the vines totally taking the keys to the estate.

It’s been a real pleasure this last month to receive people to the estate in such stunning weather. Although the unnusual high temperatures have forced some tricky decisions, with a handful visitors coming for a ‘tour’ but instead opting just for a tasting, and then to take a bottle of chilled fizz and relax in the sunshine amongst our flowers.

If you have a group who would like to come down to see us for a bespoke tour, please get in contact.

In terms of where you can enjoy our sparkling wines, we’ve been gradually extending our presence in the last year, and agreing only to work with establishments who share our values and committment to quality.

And we are particularly pleased to announce that we’ll now be available at one of London’s very best restaurants – the legendary restaurant The Ledbury in Notting Hill. Another one for your lists, and we wish you good luck with making your reservation there!

Medal news: The 2018 vintage is only our second year of released wines, and we are so proud to say that after a collection of Silvers we’ve now collected a Gold award. Our flagship Brut received this top-tier accolade from the well respected Wine GB wine competition.

The judges said: “Intense aromas of baking apples laced with salt and smoke. Super-fine mousse, detailed and precise, reining in ripe fruit with tight acids. Almondy finish; long, succulent, alive!” And the same competition also awarded a silver medal for our recently released Blanc de Noirs – a good start, but we feel that that wine has a jouney ahead of it and will only get better…

And speaking of our Blanc de Noirs, for every bottle of this wine you buy via our website, we will make a £2.00 donation to the Solvatten charity. Solvatten is Swedish for “sun water”, and it is a social enterprise founded by inventor and scientist Petra Wadström.

They have developed a portable water treatment system for off-grid households in the developing world using just the sun’s rays to purify and heat water, it’s pretty amazing. You can find out more about their work here.

OK that’s all for us for this time. Enjoy the sunshine and we will see you again very soon.

Skål! Susanna & Douglas