English Sparkling Wine: Exton Park’s Reserve Blend wines
English sparkling wine is coming of age as Exton Park release their Reserve Blend wines.
The little NV on Champagne bottles tells you that the wine inside is Non-Vintage. It has been made by carefully blending wines from different years together to ensure that, year after year, your bottles of Champagne will taste the same, no matter what happened that year in the vineyard. The result is a consistent House style.
When you see a year printed on your wine label, that means you have a vintage wine in your hands. The bottle is like a time capsule and tells you much about that year’s growing season, and all of the other unique elements that went into making the wine that year. The risk is that some years will be better or worse than others, but the reward is the story that the bottle tells you about that particular point in history.
Both styles take skill, care and attention, and established Champagne Houses make both kinds of wines. In England, however, our sparkling wine industry is still very young and most of our wineries don’t have the option to make Non-Vintage wines because you need a library of reserve wines from lots of different years in order to blend them.
This is where Exton Park stands out from the crowd. They have just released their Reserve Blend range, a trio of Traditional Method sparkling wines made from a 10-year-old library of reserve wines. Usually even Non-Vintage wines rely on a base vintage, but Exton Park are happy to challenge classic winemaking conventions and do things differently. There might be up to 20% of the latest harvest added to each bottle, but winemaker Corinne Seely isn’t dependant on the mood swings of the English weather and can draw freely from the extensive library of reserves that she has been building since 2011 to compose Exton Park’s finest wines.
Rather than using the traditional terms Vintage and Non-Vintage, these Exton Park wines are called Reserve Blends. The three wines in the collection might be from the same vines, but they are three completely different expressions, demonstrating how key blending is to the art of winemaking.
Exton Park’s Reserve Blend: The wines
Exton Park RB32 Brut (£39)
Exton Park Reserve Blends
This is the most classic expression of an English sparkling wine from Exton Park. 60% Pinot Noir and 40% Pinot Meunier with 3 years on lees provides a lemony, limey nose with a wave hello from some Granny Smith apple. The palate is whistle-clean, with a mineral edge and just a hint of biscuit. Precise, zesty and fresh, the mid-palate reveals the chalkiness of its soils and I’m left with a lingering finish of lemon peel and sourdough.
Exton Park RB23 Rosé (£39)
An elegant rosé with a depth of flavour that belies its delicate salmon-pink hue. Made from a blend of 70% Pinot Noir and 30% Pinot Meunier, the expression is fruitier than the Brut, with notes of grapefruit, nectarine and peach, which follow from the nose onto the palate. Fantastic acidity races around all corners of the mouth and again I can detect a slight chalkiness, which brings a great sophistication to this wine. This is the kind of wine that takes the sparkling rosé category away from poolside fun and into the restaurant.
Exton Park RB28 Blanc de Noirs (£43)
This 100% Pinot Noir is has sublime clean aromas of fresh red berries and shiny red apples. A racy acidity cleanses the palate after each sip and my tongue is left tingly and vibrant. This would be the ideal wine to laser through pork crackling, roasted almonds and fatty fish. The long finish has a slight sea-spray salinity to it.
You can learn more about Exton Park’s Reserve Blend wines on their website here.