English wines have enjoyed a rise in popularity since the start of the pandemic, as holidaymakers on staycations begin to explore more of the UK’s thriving culinary landscape. But how are these wines actually made?
To celebrate English Wine Week this month, we spoke to the award-winning vintners at Hampshire vineyard Hattingley Valley to learn more about what it takes to produce the most quaffable English still and sparkling wines.
Hattingley Valley’s production process is both an art and a science. Harvest is the pinnacle of the grape-growing year, when the vineyard team decides when the grapes are perfectly ripe. Each bunch is carefully picked by hand to avoid any damage to the grapes. But that’s just the start of the wine making journey.
PRESSING
Once picked, the grapes are rushed to the winery to be pressed as soon as possible, carried in 20kg crates to avoid any premature squashing. Once loaded into the Coquard press, gentle pressure is applied to minimise the extraction of undesirable colour and tannins. This produces the finest quality juice from grapes that have been carefully nurtured in the rich Hampshire chalk.
FERMENTATION
This quality juice is then fermented into a fairly neutral base wine using a special champagne yeast. Some of Hattingley’s wines are also fermented in old Burgundian oak barrels, while the remainder are placed in stainless steel tanks. Temperature control is key – if it’s too cold, the yeast won’t work, while if it’s too hot the fermentation will run too fast and possibly get stuck. Some of the juice is selected for malolactic fermentation, in which case those bacteria are co-inoculated with the yeast to soften the green malic acid found in the grapes to softer lactic acid.
BLENDING
The art of blending aims to ensure a consistent style from year to year and to identify the different types of wine made at Hattingley Valley. At this point, reserve wine from previous vintages may be added to the current blend. To perfect this art, the winemaking team call on their experience of tasting the individual wines over many years.
TIRAGE AND BOTTLING
Before the wine is bottled, tirage liqueur must be added. The liqueur consists of a mixture of wine, sugar and yeast and its purpose is to induce a second, slower fermentation in the bottle. All processes now take place inside the same bottle that customers will eventually see on the shelf.
SECOND FERMENTATION
The second fermentation can take 6-12 weeks to complete, adding approximately 1.5% alcohol to the final wine and trapping the build-up of carbon dioxide – which creates the fizz effect in a sparkling wine. At this point, the pressure within the bottle is equivalent to the pressure in the tyre of a double decker bus!
AGEING
In order to maximise quality and deliciousness, the wine must spend ‘time on lees’ which means contact with the dead yeast cells in the bottle, also known as ‘autolysis’. The high acid of the initial grapes and juice enable the wine to withstand this ageing period and, in fact, improve. Autolysis gives the wine more complexity – identified by the bread, toast and brioche character often found in long lees-aged wines. The winemakers will decide when the wine is ready after a number of years.
RIDDLING
Once the optimum moment is identified, the team will ‘riddle’ the wines on their Gyropallet. It can handle 2,000 bottles at a time and works by moving the horizontal bottles slowly into a vertical position, transferring the yeast to the neck of the bottle. This process takes 7 days and is a crucial part of the sparkling process.
DISGORGING
The neck of the bottle is then frozen so that the yeast can be removed. The disgorging line then adds the dosage liqueur of wine and sugar, as well as a butterfly cork and wirehood, resulting in the finished product – a beautiful bottle of English sparkling wine.
Finally, the bottle is labelled in house. Each label is designed by the Hattingley team, giving each wine its own identity, and is the wine you see on the shelf.
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