Labours of the English vineyards
BITING the other day into a new season Worcester apple — crisp, delicately frag- rant with the scents of autumn, worth any number of those glossily tasteless deep- frozen Granny Smiths — I was reminded of the peerless excellence of English fruit and thus by association of the 500 hectares of English vines struggling to ripen in this dismal October. Even the great storm was not a complete disaster. At Tenterden they predict high quality for what was saved and there may be an interesting flavour from the wind-borne salt deposited on the grapes. The excellence of English fruit is no myth; it has a simple explanation, the prolongation of the ripening season which, much research has now proved, aids the creation and preservation of aroma- producing compounds. There is no man more au courant with the latest oenological research than Miguel Torres Jr; no acci- dent that he has gone to the very highest of the high Penedes vineyards to make aromatic muscat and gewiirztraminer, and to a valley in Chile noted for its cool nights to make sauvignon blanc and cabernet sauvignon.
Five or six years ago, I would have counted myself among doubting Tho- mases. English wines could be remarkably aromatic on the nose, I'd grant, but invari- ably they would disappoint with thinness, lack of body on the palate. More recently, however, whether because the standard of wine-making has been improving (it clearly has), or just because I'm generally less prejudiced, I have been won over to the view that the best English wines can be both freshly aromatic and satisfying to drink — a match, in other words, for the best English apples. A recent opportunity to test this view was provided by an invitation to co-judge the annual South of England Wine of the Year Competition in the mediaeval setting of Leeds Castle. Eight wines had been pre-selected (out of more than a hundred), and so our task was not too arduous. It also turned out to be pleasant, for all the eight finalists were of a worthy commercial standard, and four were distinctly good — good not just by the standards of English wine, but those by which one would judge any wine costing around £5.
We had no doubts about the winner: it was No. 6 on our blind list, a wine with a rich, spicy nose which had me guessing at gewiirztraminer, quite rich on the palate, medium dry and beautifully balanced. It turned out to be a most controversial choice. The wine was Carr Taylor's Schon- burger, from the largest and most commer- cially orientated vineyard in Britain, run as it happened by our absent host of the evening. His fellow Weald and Downland wine-makers considered it atypical, a bet- rayal of the vernacular style, a shameful effort at aping the French. Well, atypical perhaps, but a most palatable wine all the same. I was most impressed by the runner- up, the Conghurst Regner/Chasselas. This was a steely, dry wine, very clean and fresh, but not yet ready for drinking, confirming a hunch of mine that many English wines need three or four years in the bottle to show of their best. The only sad thing about this beautifully crafted wine was that the vineyard's owner, Bar- bara Bridgewater, had just died — know- ing that her wine had reached the final, not to know how close it would come to winning.
The wines which came third and fourth should probably have tied: they were the St George's Reichensteiner, an excellent ex- ample of the English medium style with a certain amount of residual sugar, nicely balanced by fresh acidity, appealing and much easier to drink at this stage than the austere Conghurst, and the dry Harefield Mfiller-Thurgau/Huxelrebe, with sugges- tions of spice and cider on the nose, crisp on the palate. The Weald and Downland vintners did not disguise a strong feeling that this should have been the winner.
Since the competition, I have been on the look-out for other English wines, and have particularly liked two from outside the Weald and Downland area stocked by Majestic Wine Warehouses. Three Choirs 1984 (139.48 the case) from Gloucester- shire is a brilliant example of the medium style, clean and flowery and with just a hint of honey — no question that this has benefited from bottle-age. Closer to the austere Conghurst style is the medium-dry (but much more dry than medium) Bruisyard St Peter Mfiller-Thurgau from Suffolk (£43.08): this has real finesse and breed. If you wish to explore further, try the picturesquely fronted English Wine Shop at 3 Harcourt Street, Marylebone, W1.
Ausonius
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