The Grange Estate White From Black 2018, Hampshire

Description

The Grange Estate White From Black is the third Hampshire sparkling wine released by The Grange. It is a “White from Black”, AKA a Blanc de Noirs, a white wine made from only red grapes. In this case, Pinot Meunier. 

Grange Estate Wines is an exciting new Hampshire sparkling wine project. Their vineyard, named Burge’s Field, is located at The Grange Estate in Itchen Stoke near Alresford, which is approximately 5 miles to the east of Winchester. The estate was bought by John Baring (7th Lord Ashburton) in 1965 and it remains owned by the Baring to today. In fact the estate had been in the Baring family ownership, purchased by the 1st Lord Ashburton,  some 200 years previously, and passed through various other owners before returning to Baring ownership. The wine part of the business is a coming together of John Baring’s four children and is run by managing partner Zam Baring. The Grange Estate is also an arable farm and hosts an opera and dance festival each year.

The Burge’s Field vineyard gently slopes southwards down towards the River Itchen, whose clear chalk streams are world famous for their fly fishing. The soils in the vineyard are composed of Cretaceous chalk dotted with hard silica flints, the same chalk soils that extend through Hampshire, the Sussex Downs and onward to Champagne. It is this chalky soil that is perfect for growing sparkling wine grapes and help impart a steely minerality to the wines. The 52,000 Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier vines were planted in 2011 and the vineyard surface covers 30 hectares. The first Grange Estate wine were released in 2018 and the first wines were orignally made by the team at Hattingley Valley. From the 2022 vintage all wines are made at The Grange’s brand new winery under the watchful eye of newly appointed head winemaker Harry Pickering.

Unusually for The Grange Estate White From Black is bottled at a vintage wine. If you cast your mind back to 2018, you’ll remember that it was an almost perfect summer. It was also a great wine vintage in the UK and yields were up so The Grange were able to produce a vintage wine alongside the non-vintage Classic and Pink. The quality of the Pinot Meunier wines were also excellent. This release is made from four different Pinot Meunier cuvées of which 40% went through malolactic fermentation (to soften any acidity) and just 5% had contact with some very gentle oak for texture. It has spent 36 months on the lees and 5 months on cork and was disgorged to 9 grammes of residual sugar resulting in a magnificent and luxurious balance.