Best vineyards to visit this English Wine Week
England is bursting at the seams with bucolically beautiful places to visit. With over 1,000 vineyards up and down the country it would be such a waste not to spend at least a few weekends wandering through them and trying exciting wines – especially with English Wine Week upon us!
Last weekend I drove an hour out of London to visit Bolney Wine Estate, on the rolling slopes of West Sussex on the South Downs. Sussex boasts more vineyards than any other county in England so you can pack a few into a day, but we chose to relax and rusticate at their terraced restaurant overlooking the vines.
Wine tourism for English Wine Week
The UK is getting more savvy when it comes to wine tourism, with many wineries offering not only tours, tastings and gift shops but bedrooms and restaurants too. The produce at Bolney is locally sourced, with a focus on limiting waste, and it is utterly delicious. Head chef Jack Marsh sent out a platter of small dishes to try alongside flights of still and sparkling wine, with the local crab bruschetta being a highlight when sipped with the crisp Blanc de Blancs. However, this trip had been inspired by a taste of their sparkling red, a style I am becoming fairly fanatical about and apparently something I am now willing to dedicate a weekend trip to.
Duskily plummy with a rich, fine effervescence, this is what I am all about this summer. It was a showstopper with the beef carpaccio, which came with an incredible umami reduction and whisky sauce and a crisp, salty little caper salad.
The food and drink at Bolney are fantastic (they make 18 different wines as well as gin and vermouth) but just this one little plate of mouth-tingling flavour and a glass of the chilled Cuvée Noir was worth the trip alone.
Nearby Ockenden Manor has got wise to the fact it is situated in the UK’s most prolific wine region, offering a host of brilliant local wines and handy maps of the nearby recommended estates and gardens.
This gorgeously wood-panelled Elizabethan Manor, with its tiered green lawns and fires luxuriously lit in June, makes a welcome starting point for wine exploration. The restaurant was surprisingly good, serving dishes a few cuts above what I have come to expect from old English hotels. The surprise dish of the stay was my creamy leek and potato soup, dotted with chunks of spicy chorizo and truffle oil – though it was the wine list I was really here for. Rarely does one get to see such a joyfully varied selection of English wines.
Ockenden also boasts an enormous spa with indoor and outdoor pools, hot tubs, saunas, steam rooms and treatments. Perhaps one to ease the morning after…
Vineyard tours
One of my favourite winemakers, the talented and lovely Alex Hurley of London Cru Winery, our capital’s first urban winery, is hosting a five-course dinner paired with his wines among the blooms of Soho’s award-winning Dalloway Terrace on 25 June (£90, dallowayterrace.com). That same evening 10 Greek Street is hosting a masterclass with Nyetimber on aging English sparkling, popping bottles back to 2005 with a host of small plates (£60, 10greekstreet.com).
London will be abuzz with the glugging of British booze from historically illustrious restaurants such as Wiltons in St James, with its extensive English wine list featuring some of the biggest hitters like Hattingley and Gusbourne to independent wine bars like my Balham local, Henny’s, serving English wines by the glass all month.
Places up and down the country are flying the flag for our country’s brightest wine stars so book a midsummer barbeque with Gusbourne’s sparkling rosé (£30, gusbourne.com) or get educated with a masterclass such as ‘Black Chalk vs the World’ hosted by winemakers Jacob Leadley and Zoe Driver (27 June, £35, blackchalkwine.co.uk).
