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The Society's English White 2019

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£8.50 Bottle
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£102.00 Case of 12
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Our flagship English white wine is zingy, fresh and dry, with refreshing citrus and white-fruit aromas, that makes for a perfect aperitif.

Average rating: 2.4 stars (7 ratings)

Product Code: EN1501

Wine Attributes

England
White Wine
2 (of 9): Dry

11.5%
No oak flavour
Drinking now
Screwcap

Reviews (14)
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Food Matches
My Wine Notes

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Producer Profile
Regional Note
Vintage Note

Producer Profile

Three Choirs Vineyards Ltd

View all products by Three Choirs Vineyards Ltd

Situated in the English countryside where the three counties of Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire converge, Three Choirs has become one of England’s most significant producers. As well as being the second largest wine estate in the country with around 100 acres under vine, Three Choirs is also one of the oldest, having pioneered the English wine movement in the 1970s when the industry was still in its infancy.

Award-winning winemaker Martin Fowke has closely studied the techniques of New World producers such as those in New Zealand, working in cooler climate areas and has successfully tailored the winemaking processes to the prevailing English climate. The gentle undulating south-facing slopes here lie within a special microclimate, sheltered by the Malverns and the Brecon Beacons. The conditions are ideal for ripening the grapes, which are kept cool and clean by the breezes coming up the valley from the River Severn. A variety of well-suited grape varieties including pinot noir is planted and each year, red, white and rosé styles are produced along with sparkling whites.

Martin has recently started projects with boutique wineries around the world to bottle small amounts of their wines as well as brewing speciality beers and producing a range of ciders. He also makes wines for thirty other vineyards in England and Wales at the modern on-site winery. These ongoing enterprises, as well as the visitors’ facilities attracting tourists from around the world to this rural setting, look set to keep Three Choirs firmly at the top of its game.

Regional Note

England

Thanks to a combination of warmer, drier summers, better understanding of soils and micro-climates, and heavy and intelligent investment in vineyards and wineries, English and Welsh wines are now better than ever.

There are now more than 500 vineyards planted totaling over 2,000 hectares, with a 75% increase in the last six years alone. Because of our northerly latitude and maritime island climate, site selection is crucial. Not surprisingly, the majority of vineyards are found in the English southern counties of Sussex, Kent, Gloucester and Hampshire though there are some found as far north as Yorkshire.

Styles of wine

English and Welsh wine producers as a whole continue to make major improvements to their wines, but it is the producers of premium sparkling wines which have received the most accolades in recent years, blazing a trail for the industry as a whole to be given the serious attention it deserves.

Sparkling wine - This is a major growth area for the UK with our climate well-suited to the production of sparkling wine which accounts for 66% of total output. But it is the premium, bottle-fermented wines that have made the rest of the world sit up and take notice. Sussex and the South Downs are perfect for growing the classic mix of Champagne grapes, chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier. The South Downs are actually on the same geological formation (limestone on top of a sandstone belt) that continues down through the east of France to Champagne. However, this type of soil is not everything and many vines for top bubbly made over here are grown on very different, often clay-based soils quite different from the Champagne-like calcareous formation, and our climatic conditions seem to be just as important, if not more so.

The best sparkling wines give the Champenois a good run for their money and are better than many Champagnes. We currently buy top-quality premium sparklers from Nyetimber in West Sussex, who with 400 acres are the largest producer of the style in the UK, and Ridgeview in Ditchling Common, Sussex.

Dry white - Reflecting changing tastes, wines made here are increasingly made on the drier side, helped along by warmer summers and improved techniques in vineyard and winery. Still dry white wines show a natural acidity and crispness in their youth. They tend to have a certain nettley, hedgerow freshness about them that is peculiarly English and most attractive. Such wines now represent 24% of all English wine production, Still

Rosé & red - This is style that is also increasing in popularity and one at which the UK can excel, rosé again shows well in its youth, often with attractive strawberry aromas and just a hint of sweetness to balance out the acidity. Reds are a minority as they tend to sometimes lack the necessary ripeness to allow them to show at their best unless our summer and autumn weather is particularly benign. Advances are being made here too though, as producers experiment with different varieties and vineyard sites to find which ripen best where. Front-runners are dornfelder, rondo and pinot noir but at the moment, none has impressed sufficiently and prices are rather high so we have not yet selected any to offer to members.

Wine labelling - English and Welsh wines are produced and labelled under a Quality Wine Scheme which was established in 1992. They are classified in ascending order as table wine, regional wine or quality wine.

Grape guide

Faced with a blank canvas, what vines should a grower on these islands plant? Many of the varieties planted have German origins, partly because it was originally German-trained winemakers who helped UK growers with advice and expertise. It was also felt that these varieties would have better success in such a northerly latitude and, in the 1970s, when there was a resurgence of wine growing in this country, German wines were in their heyday. It is vital to choose early-ripening varieties with good resistance to fungal disease; many of those that have had success are in fact hybrids, again developed in Germany.

Today, there is a patchwork of a multitude of different varieties found in the vineyards of England and Wales. With one or two notable exceptions, these are generally blended together to create wines with a real point of interest and difference from those found elsewhere in Europe. As many of the grapes will be unfamiliar to members and because they rarely appear on their own, so may be difficult to get to know, we provide the principal characteristics below.

More recently, and line with the success of sparkling wines on these shores, pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot meunier have been planted extensively and continue to be so.

Vintage Note

England Vintage 2019

After the nigh-perfect 2018 vintage, England has had a hard act to follow with 2019! Indeed, by all other standards, 2019 was a very good vintage for England, but this is perhaps skewed by the fact that 2018 lifted the bar so high. 2019 has produced ripe, juicy and more classically English wines than the 2018s, which were fuller on the mid-palate and perhaps rounder. 2019 is likely to be a better vintage for sparkling than 2018 as acidity is key for top fizz and these will likely age better in the long term.

Food Matches

Oysters

Prawns

Salads – plain green

Smoked trout

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Reviews

Let your fellow members and your Society know what you thought

Members' Reviews (7)
Press Reviews (7)
Previous Vintages (57)

Members' Reviews (7)

Average rating: 2.4 stars (7 ratings)

MOST HELPFUL MEMBERS' REVIEWS:

19-Jun-2020
Dr Christopher Currie

"I am sorry to say I am disappointed with this wine. I'e followed Three Choirs for more than 25 years, and have always been happy with the Society's choice of their blends, including Midsummer Hill/Society English White up to the 2018 vintage - generally a good light dry wine with pleasant fruit or grass flavours. This year's offering has a good nose, but on the palate, though not positively unpleasant, it's insipid, rather flavourless and slightly sour and with little finish. Didn't work as an aperitif or with salmon, which it might have offset. Certainly English wine can go off if you keep it for several months, but this wasn't off and had only been on my racks for two or three weeks. Maybe I had a bad bottle, but I fear not."

03-Aug-2020
Mr Stanley Adams

"Lovely and zesty with a great scent. We drink it often."

I would recommend this wine

Displaying 1-7 of 7 member reviews

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MOST RECENT MEMBERS' REVIEWS:

14-Jan-2021
Mr Keith Sanham

"Asked for a refund on this one. Not sure why the Society would put their name to it. Thin, acidic and undrinkable. If this had been the first English wine we had tasted it would be the last."

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