Blackbook Winery Clayhill Vineyard 'Painter of Light' Chardonnay 2021

If someone told you that they were taking you to visit an English winery, you would be forgiven for anticipating bucolic scenes, perhaps the South Downs, Kentish Weald or the rolling hills of Gloucestershire, and a small operation, very hands on, hard working and welly wearing.

You might well be surprised, then, to find yourself in London's busy Battersea, just south of the Thames, standing in front of a railway arch under the main line between Clapham Common and Vauxhall. But this is indeed the home of the Blackbook Winery, owned and run by Sergio Verrillo and his wife Lynsey, two Londoners with a passion for wine and the gumption to set up a winery to make the stuff themselves. Now one of four urban wineries within the bounds of London, they have sourced their grapes from various English estates since they set themselves up, taking care to select growers who are as passionate and hard-working as they.

Currently they buy hand-picked, carefully selected grapes from Oxfordshire and Essex, the fruit being transported to the winery in small crates to avoid damage to the bunches. Inside the winery itself there is shiny up-to-the-minute equipment and French oak barrels in which their chardonnay is fermented and their pinot noir matured. A sparkling wine is also made, sold undisgorged under a crown cap as well as under cork after disgorgement. Ex-sommelier Sergio has many stamps in his passport from his time travelling the world, gaining winemaking experience at prestigious estates that include de Montille in Burgundy and Calera in California, and he is putting it to good use here.

This may be unlikely surroundings but the wines are uncommonly good, as illustrated by the chardonnay. The fruit is from a single vineyard, naturally fermented in Burgundian oak barrels before a further 7 months ageing on the lees, and it is then bottled unfined and unfiltered.