First up, something of interest to any UK-based bubbleheads:
My friends at grower champagne specialist Sip! got in touch to offer readers of Six Atmospheres a tasty 15% discount on their wines. I’m going to taste through the portfolio later today and will send *email subscribers only* my picks (and the code)
(Full disclosure here: Sip commission a series of pieces from me this year, answering some of the most common questions asked about Champagne. I don’t, however, receive anything if you buy wine or use the code.)
Onto England, then. There won’t be a Tim Atkin England report this year. I’m certainly going to continue covering some English wines here, though (especially the bubbles), so make sure you subscribe to keep up to date. If there’s enough interest I may even do a consolidated report here over the summer - let me know what you think.
Black Chalk make a new mark, grape to glass
I spoke to Jacob Leadley and Zoe Driver (above) of independent Hampshire producer Black Chalk last week before they launched their 2020 sparkling wines. These are the first wines Black Chalk have produced from their own sites (which previously belonged to Cottonworth vineyards), and the first made in their own winery (rather than made by Leadley in the digs of his old employer, Hattingley Valley).
2018 was the last release, from bought-in grapes. Why no 2019? “It was a period where it could have gone either way”, explained Leadley as he described the move away from Hattingley Valley and the sizeable - and risky - leap to full independent production. “We could have ended up as we are, or we could have ended up with Black Chalk never being made again. There was no real point in trying to make a wine in 2019.” If you thought that English wine was fuelled by magnates and millionaires, Black Chalk is a reminder that there are plenty of genuine entrepreneurs, too, as used to life on the edge as the vines they tend.
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