*Henners’ vineyard, looking south towards the Channel. Newly pruned vines.*

Despite being in the wine trade for 20 years and having visited scores of wineries – could it be hundreds? – until ten days ago I’d never been to an English vineyard.

When I first tasted English wines, they were so unimpressive that I couldn’t have sold them with honest enthusiasm. So there was no point in stocking them, let alone visiting their places of origin. In the last decade things have improved greatly, and we’ve tended to stock three or four English wines at any one time. I’ve switched from one to another winery as something caught my eye, or impressed me at a trade tasting. Nyetimber, Stopham Estate, Camel Valley, Hush Heath – all make good wines and all have featured on our shelves for shorter or longer periods. But I never found a producer whose wines seemed both consistent and exciting across a varied range of styles. So I never ‘followed’ any winery in particular, and never felt the need to visit anywhere.

That changed in recent months when I realized that Henners, who I had been buying from occasionally since 2016 were producing wines of exceptional quality, and had been doing so more and more regularly for a couple of years. I checked their selection at their distributor’s trade tasting this spring. It was superb.

Finally I had found, I realised, an English winery to equal some of my favourites in France, Germany, New Zealand and elsewhere. It was time for a visit.

Cara and I took the train from Victoria to Catchpole in East Sussex one grey and blustery February morning. From there we were driven by Henners’ energetic Cellar Door Manager Rebecca Apley to the winery, and handed over to the Head Winemaker Collette O’Leary. She walked us around the three hectares of wines adjacent to the recently extended winery, where we met Will Robinson, Vineyard Manager, pruning the vines. As we walked back through the gleaming steel tanks and golden oak barrels in the winery, Sam Williams, Assistant Winemaker, flashed past us, meaning that we had met four-fifths of the Henners team. Only Tim Whiteley, who handles commercial matters, was absent that day – off working with Boutinot Wines, the major Manchester-based winemaker and distributor who have owned Henners for five years.

Yes, five staff, that’s all. It’s a tiny, close-knit team They’re clearly united in their drive to put Henners on the map as a leading English winery. That determination has led them to open a new cellar door visitor’s centre this spring (small but well appointed), to dress their bottles with some of the most original and attractive labelling I’ve seen in many years, and above all to make the highest quality wine possible – consistently, and across a range of styles.

An outline of the visit, and a sketch of the vineyard and winery, can be found in my previous blog, Star of the Sussex Downs. What follows is a more detailed account of the six wines we tasted that day. But before that, I can’t resist quoting some fascinating and memorable lines that Collette threw at us as we studied the vineyard, and tasted the wine. As well as being a great winemaker, she is clearly a great wine communicator! Each of these quotes deserves a blog of its own, such is the wisdom and insight contained in them.

‘As in Champagne, making good English sparkling wine is about the art of the blend.’

‘We go where the fruit takes us.’
‘Pruning of the vineyards is now done entirely in house: it’s the most important job in the vineyard.’
‘Vine leaves are like solar panels. They convert sunlight to energy, which in turn converts sour grapes to sweet ones. The acidity in young grapes keeps birds and beasts away. As it ripens, sugar appears: the grape is asking to be eaten..’
‘For a wine producing country, England is uniquely cold and humid. Even in our warm and dry microclimate.’
‘Bubbles in wine amplify flavours ten times over. So you have to be very careful from the start. You want little or no phenolic presence, and oak has to be subtle if it’s there at all. Otherwise, in a few years’ time the wine will be unbearably grippy.’
‘Oak is like celery. You want to add it at an early stage of cooking to add texture and depth of flavour, but you don’t want to taste celery in the finished dish. Likewise, in a sparkling wine you don’t want to taste oak, but you want it there in the background providing texture and creaminess.’
‘Blending is extremely complex – an art rather than a science.’

Whether artist or scientist - or most likely, a bit of both - Collette is an exceptional talent. What follows are her main comments as she poured each wine, and my notes taken at the time with a few added fact and figures. All these wines are now available to buy in Kirkness & Gorie, and the prices are shown are correct as of this publication.

*It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it*.

Sparkling

Henners, Brut, Non-Vintage

Collette : ‘A blend of the three classic Champagne grapes, Chardonnay (40%), Pinot Noir (35%) and Pinot Meunier (25%). The current release is mostly from the 2018 vintage, though there’s a small amount of older reserve wine blended in for richness. The Chardonnay gives lemony freshness, the Pinot Noir provides structure, and the Meunier delicate red berry notes. It’s aged for two to three years on lees before release.’

Duncan: Bright straw in colour. Persistent bubbles in the glass. Aromas are mostly lemony, though there is a touch of attractive yeastiness from the lees ageing. It’s on the palate it really impresses: citrus flavours and a creamy texture, enlivened by the fine fizz. It’s like sparkling lemon meringue pie! Initially it seems to be slightly sweet, but resolves into the creamy texture I mentioned, and in fact it finishes long and quite dry. All in all, a wonderfully balanced and very classy sparkler. I see it’s a multi-award winner, and I’m not surprised. This is what people mean when they say England can produce sparkling wine to challenge Champagne. Highly recommended. Cork, 12%, £34.99.

Henners, Brut Rosé, Non-Vintage

Collette: ‘Only red grapes go into this: two thirds Pinot Meunier and one third Pinot Noir. We press very gently and macerate for only eight to twelve hours to extract the colour. Yeast absorbs colour at every stage of the winemaking process. So if you start off with a colour of, say, 10 after maceration, by the time the bottle is released it will have lightened to about a 4.’

Duncan: I’d say Collette has judged the colour perfectly: it’s a lovely salmon pink, though occasionally suggesting glints of onion skin as I swirl. Although not labelled as such, this wine is – like the Brut – mostly made with 2018 fruit. Jancis Robinson hailed it as ‘England’s miracle vintage, going on to describe it as, ‘Probably the best vintage of the modern era, thanks to the warm summer that produced large volumes of top-quality fruit.’ That’s apparent here, there’s lots of red berry fruitiness on the nose and palate – especially strawberries, with some redcurrant asperity in there too. If you want a very classy sparkling rosé, this is perfect. Cork, 12%, £39.99

Henners, Vintage, 2014

Collette: ‘70% Chardonnay and 30% Pinot Noir. Pinot Meunier tends to age quickly, and as this is a wine for keeping, we decided not to include any. The Chardonnay provides freshness and the Pinot body, and it’s aged on lees for at least four years before release. I like this with fish or cheese.’

Duncan: The extended lees ageing is immediately apparent on the nose, which has a strong brioche or bread dough character. That complexity is followed through on the palate by layers of fruitiness that alternate between brisk citrus and rich tropical fruit. The overall mouthfeel, too, shifts back and forth from dryness to richness as time passes and the wine reveals its depths. Another good vintage according to Jancis Robinson: ‘A dream year for UK vineyards with little frost, very good flowering weather, a cool wet August, but warm September and October.’ This is really something special, and will clearly age and improve for quite a few years to come. The price is a mystery to me: a great bargain for this quality. Snap it up while you can! Cork, 12%, £39.99

Still

Henners, Gardner Street Rosé, 2020

Collette: ‘Gardner Street is the old name for our village, now called Herstmonceux. We like to use it as it evokes gardens and growth and hand-tending – all very appropriate for our own vineyards, as you saw. This is the first of our wines to be certified as sustainable, though we follow sustainable practices in all our winemaking. It’s 60% Pinot Meunier, 40% Pinot Noir, with all the fruit coming from just outside the winery. Pinot Meunier does well in England’s climate, and 2020 was a good, warm year too. About 12 hours maceration then fermentation in steel.’

Duncan: Very pale salmon in colour. On the palate it’s silky smooth, with a surprising thread of sweetness – which is, however, balanced by a fresh, zesty finish. The only barrier to this being a huge summer success is the price, which, as so often with English wines, is steeper than comparable wines from larger-production countries. Which is a shame, because many people would enjoy this enormously. Screwcap, 12.5%, £19.99.

Henners, Gardner Street Classic, 2020

Collette: ‘This is 15% Chardonnay from our own vineyards, and 85% Bacchus, sourced from vineyards in Sussex and Kent. Part of the Chardonnay is barrel fermented to give extra weight and body, but it’s old barrels so there’s no oak apparent in the aroma.’

Duncan: Almost water clear. The nose is beautifully aromatic, somewhere between elderflower cordial and Sauvignon Blanc. You don’t have to go looking for the pleasure: it jumps out of the glass at you! On the palate, there’s a fruit ‘n’ flower cocktail. Wow, I’ve never been that impressed by Bacchus as a grape, but this is lovely. The Chardonnay is apparent only in a mid-palate richness and smoothness, Bacchus is definitely the star. There’s a touch of sweetness to lure you in, but it finishes dry. It would make a fantastic aperitif, and I’d love to try it with slightly spicy dishes.‘ Screwcap, 12.5%, £18.99

Henners, Native Grace Barrel Chardonnay, 2020

Collette: ‘Our new vintage: just about to be released. It’s 100% barrel-fermented Chardonnay, which goes through 100% malolactic fermentation for added texture and weight. A mixture of (mostly) new and old French oak barrels. The wine is aged for six months in barrel before bottling, then for another six months in bottle before release.’

Duncan: The oak is immediately apparent on the nose, and on the palate too, but there is loads of fruit to back it up. A bold wine, despite the low alcohol level. This needs the right food to show its best. I’m thinking a nice bit of luxury white fish – halibut or monk – with some creamy sauce and a scattering of toasted hazelnuts. That would be a heavenly match! (We currently have 2018 on our shelves.) Screwcap, 12%, £19.99

Henners and Food

After the rather serious and focused part of the tasting, Collette passed Cara and I back to Rebecca, who laid a tremendous spread of local cheese and charcuterie in front of us. It’s a mistake to think that sparkling wine should always be drunk as an aperitif before a meal, or at a party with no food in sight. It does perform very well in those roles, but it can also be an excellent accompaniment to food.

The three of us spent an enjoyable hour or so proving this theory by trying the different sparkling (and still) wines with the contents of the board in front of us. I was no longer taking detailed notes, but I did make a point of recording the cheeses we enjoyed:

Blue Clouds, from Balcombe Estate in Sussex. A superb mild and creamy blue, rather similar in style to perennial K&G favourite Montagnolo. This went particularly well with the Brut NV.
Mayfield, from Alsop and Walker, East Sussex. Wow, what a superb cheese - my favourite milk-based discovery of the day - semi-hard and very holey, somewhere between an Emmental and an Edam. This seemed to go particularly well with the Brut Rosé.
Burwash Rose from The Traditional Cheese Dairy in East Sussex. They also make Lord of the Hundreds, which we get occasionally. It’s a washed rind cheese, rather like a slightly better behaved and delicate - ‘washed in English rose water’! - than the popular Minger. Our favourite wine with this was the Vintage 2014: the yeastiness of the wine went well with the subtly stinky rind of the cheese.
Seven Sisters, from High Weald Dairy in West Sussex. A semi-soft, matured sheep’s milk cheese, coated in a layer of Hebridean seaweed. Another lovely flavoursome cheese with the seaweed adding flecks of colour rather like the nettles on Cornish Yarg do, though the tang of the sea was unmistakeable. Not sure why, but this went very well with the aromatic, floral Classic still wine.
Olde Sussex, also from The Traditional Cheese Dairy in East Sussex. We’ve had this cheese in the shop once or twice, though not recently. I’ve never thought about it before, but it’s a bit similar to Westray Wife.
Golden Cross, by Kevin and Alison Blunt, East Sussex. One of the greatest English goat’s cheeses: chalky in texture when young, delicately sprinkled with ash, with a robust but perfectly balanced flavour.
Flower Marie, also by Kevin and Alison Blunt, Greenacres Farm, East Sussex. And this is one of England’s greatest sheep’s cheeses. We had some of this for the first time at Christmas, and this tasting reminded me how good it is - must get it back in stock!

All in all a quite fantastic selection of cheese. The variety of styles and flavours was impressive, considering they’re all produced within a few miles of the winery. And the quality and presentation was uniformly high. It’s not just good wine they make in this part of the world!

In an English Country Vineyard