Classic Cuvée, Hoffmann & Rathbone 2015
Wine Review Online 96
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Why this wine
Hoffmann & Rathbone make tiny quantities and refuse to release them young, so this 2015 has had seven to ten years on lees before disgorging — a regime almost no English producer can afford. The ferment is spread across steel, large oak, chestnut and a terracotta egg, which is why it tastes of nuts and pastry rather than green apple. Proof that English sparkling can age.
At a glance
- Grape
- Pinot Noir 60%, Chardonnay 30%, Meunier 10%
- Region
- Sussex, England
- Alcohol
- 12.00%
- Body
- Medium
- Acidity
- High
- Sweetness
- Dry
- Drink
- Long (10-20 yrs)
- Pairs with
- Seafood, Poultry & Pork, Cheese
How it tastes
A satin mousse carries rich aromas of sweet almond, hazelnut, peach and raspberry. The palate is beautifully balanced and full of finesse, dry at 6 g/l, with the nutty, savoury depth that seven to ten years in cellar on lees brings. Pinot Noir 60%, Chardonnay 30%, Meunier 10%.
The producer
Hoffmann & Rathbone is a boutique winery in England's Sussex Weald, founded by the husband-and-wife team of Ulrich Hoffmann and Birgit Rathbone; Hoffmann spent 22 years working from the Rolf-Willy estate in Baden-Württemberg to Châteaux de Fieuzal and Haut-Gardère in Bordeaux, Artadi in Navarra and Cain Vineyards in the Napa Valley before the Sussex countryside and its cool climate kept him there. The fruit comes from Ford Farm Vineyard in East Sussex, three south-facing parcels on a single farm at 50 to 80 metres, ringed by woodland that shelters them from wind and holds the heat, on clay over sandstone; the vines are Guyot trained and farmed without herbicides, with under-vine weeding, solar panels, boreholes and a wildflower meadow, orchard and woodland kept for biodiversity, and the harvest is picked by hand into small crates, often a fortnight earlier than most. The fruit was meticulously selected and whole-bunch pressed, the juice separated from the skins in three fractions and settled naturally, then fermented over 14 days at 15°C with a selected yeast called 'sleeping beauty' that dates back to 1895 — in stainless steel, in 500 to 600-litre oak barrels, in a few chestnut barrels and in a terracotta egg. The wine was kept sur lie up to five months, settled, blended, filtered and bottled the following June, riddled periodically, and this cuvée was cellared for seven to ten years before disgorging; it is low in total sulphur and at the lower end of Brut for residual sugar.
Food and drinking
Serve at 8–10°C, in a white-wine glass. It has the weight for grilled langoustine, a roast chicken, a mushroom risotto or a hard sheep's cheese, and is drinking well now and for three to five years; no decanting. Suitable for vegetarians and vegans.