A young red to rival Beaujolais
YEARS ago, British wine merchants would race to secure Beaujolais Nouveau for their stocks.
But now the UK’s first young red is being made near the English border with Wales.
“It’s not a wine to be taken too seriously, it’s a fun drink, taking on the spirit of Beaujolais Nouveau,” winemaker Simon Day explained at his vineyard in Ledbury, near Hereford.
Amid the gloomy atmosphere around the country during the pandemic, he said he hoped the wine would be a “little ray of sunshine to end the year”.
As is tradition, the “English Nouveau”, like its more famous French namesake, was released on the third Thursday in November.
On the nose, the Herefordshire red has aromas of cherry, blackberry and cranberry as well as exotic fruits, according to Day.
He recalled how at the end of the 1970s and in the early 1980s British wine merchants competed to be the first to bring back Beaujolais Nouveau directly from the producers.
They returned from France “driving as fast as they could” in sports cars filled with cases of wine, he told AFP.
“It was a big event. Lots of press, lots of fun,” he said, adding that he hoped good English red wine could be similarly celebrated.
Climate change
The 2020 vintage from the Herefordshire vineyard is Day’s second after the winemaker became the first to produce a primeur red wine in Britain.
The whole production will amount to 2,500 bottles and will be
sold in the upmarket supermarket chain Waitrose for £11.99 (RM64.53).
Instead of the traditional variety of Gamay grape used in Beaujolais, the English winemaker uses Pinot Noir.
Otherwise, the winemaking process remains the same, using carbonic maceration to extract flavour and colour from the grape without an overbearing taste of tannin.
Space is increasingly being given over to vineyards in Herefordshire, predominantly at the expense of orchards for apple-growing which has become less profitable.
In 2019, Britain had 3,500 hectares (8,650 acres) of vineyards – four times the space devoted to vines in 2000.
In the past 10 years, Wine GB, the UK’s professional winegrowing association, estimates the land used for vineyards has increased by 150%
There are currently 770 vineyards in Britain, nearly three-quarters (72%) of which produce sparkling
wines.
Day said global warming is a factor in the growth of British winemaking.
As one of the country’s few second-generation winemakers, he has observed that harvesting takes place, on average, two to three weeks earlier than it did at the start of his career.
Long history
At the start of Britain’s wine revival in the 1970s, Day’s father made wine just “a stone’s throw” away from where he now works.
“Despite my parents’ best efforts to make me find a proper job, the lure of wine had me in its grasp, I really wanted to make wine,” he said.
His vineyard has the advantage, compared to others in the area, of being spared rain coming from the west, creating what Day describes as a “relatively dry climate”. – AFPRelaxnews