FOOD & DR INK
FESTIVE FIZZ JAMES THORNE FROM THORNE WINES SHOWS YOU HOW TO PERFECTLY PAIR SAFFRON GRANGE'S WINES WITH CHRISTMAS FOODS Seyval Blanc Reserve 2016 Honeysuckle, grapefruit and melon with lemony acidity: this is pure joy to drink. Crisp and refreshing, it’s the ideal party fizz; perfect on its own (while unwrapping presents) or served with nibbles. tatin and bright citrus notes. A pure crystalline palate of greengage and lemon tart with a subtle floral core and brioche finish. Perfect with smoked salmon (and sour cream blinis or scrambled eggs). Even better with cocktail sausages or pigs in blankets. The crisp acidity is great with the richness of bacon and sausages. Sparkling Rosé 2016 Fresh redcurrants, cassis and star anise. This is a vivacious wine with a lovely full but soft textured palate. It’s like a perfectly glazed strawberry and creme tart; inviting and pleasing with every mouthful. Dreamy with a mince pie, the balance of red fruit and spice works in harmony with the sweet-and-sour minced fruit and buttery pastry. That’s if there is enough left by the time the mince pies arrive! Classic Cuvée 2016 Complex aromas of tarte
“We’re starting from a green field and doing it our way”
year: in 2017, French champagne house Taittinger planted its first vineyards in Kent with the aim of producing sparkling wine by 2023, and the rest are making noises about following suit – if they haven’t already done so. In an 2017 interview with The Drinks Business , Gilles Descôtes (champagne house Bollinger’s chef de cave) said: “Maybe it would be more interesting to find an English way, and an English taste and style for sparkling, rather than only saying that it uses the same grape varieties as champagne.” And this is precisely what Saffron Grange is up to, in its suntrap of a chalk valley: building on traditional techniques and approaches, but also developing its own style of caring for its peculiarly British vines. “We’re starting from a green field and doing it our way,” Paul says: “and we’re changing some of the ways that wine growing is done. We’re low intervention – for example: we have a system called gentle pruning that’s quite kind to the plant: instead of axing them all back, you leave enough wood so, as the dieback
I wondered ‘How do you do this agri bit, this horticultural bit?’ When Paul and his family lived in Henley, he was aware the land was based on chalk – ideal conditions for wine growing – and that others had already cottoned on to this with their own vineyards; but he wanted to do something different. “I didn’t want to copy: I wanted to put a different delivery on it,” he says. “I was looking at Hampshire, Sussex, but Ross’s parents were in this area so we started looking at this land. And that was where the luck came in – we knew there was chalk here, but we hadn’t realised that it was so significant.” Most of Essex and south Cambridgeshire sits on the same chalk seam that runs through Sussex and into the heart of France’s winemaking regions: this unique, porous, million-year-old material both drains well and retains moisture, making it ideally suited to viticulture. Warming global temperatures have seen the sparkling wine industry creep further north with each passing
takes place, it doesn’t go right the way back into the main system of the trunk. It makes sense, but it’s a recent approach. In all the established vineyards where the intellectual property isn’t necessarily shared, once you gradually get in and talk, to find out what the French do, what the Germans do and so on – you discover there’s this whole layer of technique, of ‘Oh, didn’t you know that?’ information – which explains so much…” In 2008, the Edwards family planted their first 300 vines: followed by 5,000
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