On 24 January 2017, the Club was privileged to spend an evening with Sam Lindo of the Camel Valley vineyards. Privileged not just because Sam is a three-times English Winemaker of the Year and immediate past chair of the UK Vineyard Association but because Camel Valley is a rather special site.
Camel Valley was set up by Sam’s father Bob and his mother Annie in 1989 just above the Camel River in Cornwall. Though they didn’t realise it at the time it was about the best possible spot for a vineyard with the lowest rainfall and the best protection from the sea influence. Unlike most of the UK’s vineyards it’s on loam (a mix of clay, sand and silt) rather than chalky soils. This, according to Sam, makes Camel Valley’s life ‘easier’ but it’s also part of a counter-cultural take on life. They aim for simplicity: pick, crush, press. Let the grapes do the work…
And it’s paid off! Camel Valley has gone head to head with the Champenois in competition and come off best. They won the first of their long list of gold medals in international wine competitions in 2005 up against the best Champagne can offer and have repeated that feat many times since, most notably for their Pinot Noir rosé wines.
Sam made his first wine aged 15 but then went off to Uni with no plans to return to wine-making. But after jobs in finance he came back from Singapore in 2001 to work full-time in the vineyard and has been there ever since.
He sketched out the history of UK wine for before we launched into the tasting which encompassed not just the trademark sparkling wines of the UK but also some of the increasingly popular and competitive still wines. In the 1950s the flag was raised by retired Army officers such as Guy Salisbury Jones at Hambledon who grew Seyval (like the Lindos) and German hybrids. The UKVA was set up in 1967 by Merrydown Cider who had the idea of emulating their success in cider with wine. But the 70s and 80s were hard work viticulturally and commercially. Chapel Down went under twice before its current very successful incarnation under Frazer Thompson. It was a struggle to sell sparkling wine in this period and it was not until wine became more of a popular drink in the 1990s that the efforts of New Hall in Essex, Chapel Down, Denbies, Ridgeview and Nyetimber really started to pay off. There were still tough times to come though and the boom of the 1990s which saw vineyard extent reach 1500 ha in 2001 was not reached again until 2013 and a new boom. There’s a lot of land coming on stream both under established brands such Nyetimber (aiming to get up to 1m bottles) and new entrants.
The focus of all these players is on sparkling wine and Sam explained why. Global warming means rising temperatures in France and rising temperatures means less and less acidity. What Britain can do (thanks to colder weather) is produce wines with the sort of acidity that France had in the 1950s. You get, said Sam, a more elevated ‘zing’ with British wines. And, what’s more, the base wines for English sparkling wine spends longer on the vine and thus acquires more protein in the juice, which in turn means more ‘foamability’. That in turn means English winemakers can disgorge the wines earlier with more fresh yeast character and more (better) bubbles.
In general, though, English winemakers are starting to behave more like the Champenois. More firms are keeping back wine from one vintage to blend across vintages; some are putting in solera tanks. Nyetimber in particular is rigorous about doing things the French way and, of course, French companies are now moving into Kent and Sussex. The interesting question is whether they will stick with a ‘champagne style’ that Sam feels is accentuating the over-worked nature of wines that start with lower acidity or whether they will go for the freshness that Sam and his team aim for.
Our exploration of the English wines started with the 2013 Camel Valley Annie’s Anniversary (so named because Sam’s mum always does the pruning of these Seyval vines). This gold-medal winning wine is 100% Seyval, which, in line with the Camel Valley philosophy spends little time on the lees and is released young. It makes an interesting wine: pale gold in colour with a fresh fruit nose that emphasises quince, a touch of raspberry or redcurrant and some white pepper. The other interesting thing that emerged about the Seyval-based wines was their international potential. In a nutshell, they’re not Pinot Noir or Chardonnay and Sam has hopes for increasing American success by creating a category and a buzz about English sparkling wine – aided by the support of Hugh Johnson’s son who is focusing on selling a small number of British producers in the States.
Wine number 2 was the 2014 Camel Valley Pinot Noir Rosé Brut. Unlike most traditional champagnes the colour here comes simply from the press which gives the wine more fruit character (raspberry and redcurrant) and a yeasty palate.
Wine number 3 was the 2014 Camel Valley Chardonnay Brut. This is a wine that Sam can only make once every three years or so. In other years the acid levels are simply too high. This wine was disgorged six months or so ago but already acquiring some toasty character to sit add complexity to the fresh quince, green apple and melon flavours.
For the fourth wine of the evening we switched to Nyetimber’s Classic Cuvée. This had a more golden look and the characteristic cream soda nose imparted by a stint in barrel and accentuated by the slightly fatter and more buttery notes of wine which (unlike the Camel Valley wines) has gone through malolactic fermentation. This wine had at least a dash of Pinot Noir in the blend and that too sharpened the contrast with more linear Chardonnay Brut.
Asked to vote on the sparkling wines by Richard Liwicki, the Chairman for the evening, almost all went for Camel Valley wines with a majority in favour of the Pinot Noir-based rosé.
There’s no doubt in Sam’s mind that the British market is going to get tougher given the number of new plantings coming on stream. Rathfinny in Sussex is aiming for 600 hectares and some estimates suggest that there may be another 7-8m bottles of British sparkling wine coming into the market over the next five years, compared with around 1.5m bottles annual sales today. This is because English sparkling wine is a undoubted hit with the market – and it’s why the French are moving in. If they’re going to lose share then they might as well lose it to themselves than a British producer…
We moved on after the four sparklings to four still wines; one from Camel Valley, the others from a range of producers.
Wine number 5, the Camel Valley Darnibole Bacchus comes from a unique site (a PDO no less) that was planted in 2006. There’s no residual sugar in this wine and the overall impact is of a sparklingly fresh still wine, one that does well in blind tastings.
Bacchus is the most widely planted still wine grape in the UK. This Riesling and Silvaner + Muller Thurgau cross (created in Geisenheim in the 1930s) is less planted today as new entrants focus on Pinot Noir and Chardonnay but it has the ideal level of tartaric acid for UK conditions and could act in the UK as Sauvignon Blanc (which won’t ripen in England) has done in New Zealand.
The 2014 Furleigh Bacchus Fumé divided opinion. For some the ‘fumé’ character was distinctive and appealing; other found it rather foxy and sexy (but not in a good way). Interestingly, although the level of acid was the same as the Camel Valley Bacchus, once the sugar had left the palate, the acids seemed rather harsher.
Wine number 7 was the 2015 Valley Farm Madeleine Angevine. This is a sweetish grape (very attractive to wasps) that ripens early even in UK conditions and has higher residual sugar than the other wines we tasted. The Valley Farm offering is a Gold Medal winner but again it rather divided opinion.
Not so the last wine which was the evening’s only red. The 2014 Gusbourne Pinot Noir came from the warmest Gusbourne site in a warm year and benefited from low yields (only 250 grams of grapes per vine). That means only some 3000 bottles (at least that’s the story) but this is a wine for keeping. The nose is currently restrained with a dash of red fruit, a touch of pencil lead and a hint of smokiness but it has definite promise of character and complexity. It would have been interesting to taste the Gusborne wine against other English reds – not least Richard and Sian Liwicki’s Cote Bothy.
Gazing into other areas of his crystal ball, Sam reckoned that whilst sparkling wines were the current focus of investor and producer interest the still wines were here here to stay – if for no other reason than that they are currently the portal to the sparkling wines. The bigger question is what the strategy is for positioning English sparkling wines in the global market. ‘No strategy’, said Sam. At least not yet. But is it a niche market for domestic-only consumption? Probably not, given US and French interest. Should Britain aim to develop its own equivalents of Prosecco or Cava based on grapes such as Seyval? Or focus on the classic varieties and go head to head with the Champenois? There’s a lot to play for and there’s little doubt there’s an interesting ten years of both local and international competition coming up. The end result may be increasing levels of consolidation in the industry. However, Sam’s business has no great ambitions to grow and, on the evidence of a sparkling evening, few of us would bet against Camel Valley being one the successes when we look back from the 2020s.
GH: 28/1/17