As English Wine Week and Welsh Wine Week 2015 get underway, I speak to the CEO of one of England’s leading wine producers, Frazer Thompson, from Chapel Down.
There has been a massive leap in sales of sparkling wines in just a year and English sparkling wine has been winning praise from all quarters.
![Frazer Thompson, Chapel Down wines](https://sp-ao.shortpixel.ai/client/to_webp,q_glossy,ret_img,w_149,h_300/https://www.onefootinthegrapes.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Frazer-Thompson-Chapel-Down-wines-149x300.jpg)
Says Frazer: “What we’re seeing at the moment is a big growth in sparkling wines and particularly prosecco. It is cheap, sweet and available everywhere and it feels like a bit of luxury.
“People get the habit of a sparkling wine – the theory is they trade to the next level up.
“English sparkling wine isn’t cheap. We are growing it on the most expensive land that you can get in England – the south east – and yields are half those of Champagne.“
“Our still wine is also very important. We don’t make consistently great red wine; but in good years we can make fabulous fresh pinot noir. What we are going to make is staggeringly good chardonnay and aromatic whites.
![Chapel Down Kits Coty 2012 wine](https://sp-ao.shortpixel.ai/client/to_webp,q_glossy,ret_img,w_400,h_117/https://www.onefootinthegrapes.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Chapel-Down-Kits-Coty-2012-wine.jpg)
Chapel Down Kit’s Coty Estate Chardonnay 2012 (RRP £13.99) has just won gold at The Sommelier Wine Awards. Says Frazer: “If you’d said 15 years ago that a still chardonnay from England was going to win a gold medal I’d have absolutely laughed in your face. You know how rotten 2012 was, yet even in that awful year we produced a gold medal winner and I find that mind blowing.”
Frazer continues: “The English national grape is Bacchus – a delicious aromatic white wine. It is very similar to sauvignon blanc Cloudy Bay. You won’t be disappointed.”
{I wasn’t. Chapel Down Bacchus 2014 is driven through with fresh lime, gooseberries and lashes of zest RRP £11.99}
![Chapel Down Flint Dry 2014 wine](https://sp-ao.shortpixel.ai/client/to_webp,q_glossy,ret_img,w_300,h_254/https://www.onefootinthegrapes.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Chapel-Down-Flint-Dry-2014-wine-300x254.jpg)
Says Frazer: “Chapel Down Flint Dry was served at William and Kate’s wedding, It’s a fresh easy drinking wine that will match any pinot grigio or light aromatic white which people love on warm days.”
{I tried this wine sitting outside in late May sunshine and really enjoyed it. The wine has a mineral knife-edge like an unoaked chardonnay, but has a lovely lifting grassy-greenery too RRP £9.99)
I asked Frazer how he would encourage people to pick an English sparkling wine from the wine shelves.
He said: “If you buy a bottle of English sparkling, you’re buying two things. A better product – and a story. It is truly world class; in a blind tasting it will stack up against all the greatest wines in the world.”
![Chapel Down Blanc de Blancs 2009](https://sp-ao.shortpixel.ai/client/to_webp,q_glossy,ret_img,w_400,h_113/https://www.onefootinthegrapes.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Chapel-Down-Blanc-de-Blancs-2009.png)
Says Frazer: “Everybody knows it’s as good as Champagne. It makes you feel good because when you buy it, you are supporting our economy with a product that is innovative, new, original.
“And every penny that the consumer spends isn’t going to a French Champagne house, it’s going back in the ground and employing people to do really cool things.”
- Waitrose stocks over 100 English and Welsh wines, the widest range in a UK supermarket. Some wines are on offer until June 2.
![English The Limes Selection 2013 wine Waitrose](https://sp-ao.shortpixel.ai/client/to_webp,q_glossy,ret_img,w_300,h_300/https://www.onefootinthegrapes.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/English-The-Limes-Selection-2013-wine-Waitrose-300x300.jpg)
I tried Waitrose English The Limes Selection, 2013 (Save 20%, from £9.99 to £7.99) which is punched with lime and lemon and a little bit of crunchy apples to taste.
If you don’t live near a Waitrose store, head to their website www.waitrosecellar.com
- Elsewhere, M&S has extended its range with ten new home-grown wines, including its first Welsh wine, Tintern Parva Bacchus 2013 (£13) from Parva Farm Vineyards in Monmouthshire.
To find out more about the English and Welsh wine weeks (May 23rd-May 31st, 2015) , go to www.englishwineproducers.co.uk
Published in the saturday extra magazine May 23, 2015
Liverpool Echo – South Wales Echo – Daily Post Wales – Huddersfield Examiner – The Chronicle, Newcastle – Teesside Evening Gazette – Birmingham Mail – Coventry Telegraph – Paisley Daily Express