British bubbles aren’t a new thing - most consumers of sparkling wine are aware of the fact that England can produce sparkling wine, and can do it well. Yet, there is still a peculiar hesitancy about the category, with some taking issue with the fact that English sparkling wines, while generally significantly cheaper than good Champagne, still cost more than your average bottle of Crémant. However, many British producers are trying to bring more prestige to the wine industry there, and Nyetimber is leading the charge. They were the first English estate to focus on using the three traditional Champagne grapes in their production, and their sparkling wines have repeatedly outperformed many Champagnes in blind tastings.
The current head winemaker, Cherie Spriggs, is an innovator and has helped the Nyetimber brand evolve and improve. Only recently has there been a push for English bubbles to be made in a non-vintage fashion as opposed to being vintage dated, which is how they were historically produced. Nyetimber has transitioned to making more of their wines multi-vintage blends, using some wine from the current release but blending in a large amount of back vintage reserve wine, as is common in Champagne. In fact, if you want to get really geeky about it, Nyetimber has something very important in common with Krug - each bottle of wine has a code on it which allows you to get very specific information on your bottle of wine, from the exact blend of reserve wines to the riddling and disgorging dates. Also like in Champagne, wines are typically aged on the lees for 3-5 years to ensure deep complexity and the toasty, brioche notes we all know and love in our sparkling wines..
The Classic Cuvée is majority Chardonnay blended with a significant amount of Pinot Noir and a little bit of Pinot Meunier. The base wine is from 2013, blended with about 25% reserve wine from previous vintages. Nyetimber’s Tillington Cuvée is a single-vineyard wine composed of 76% Pinot Noir and 24% Chardonnay, with extensive lees aging.
