I simply don’t have the time to update this little news page. I’ll leave the archive up for your amusement, but for more regular ramblings you can find me on Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/mattgregorywines/
English Wine Harvest!
Would you like to come and help pick grapes this autumn? If so get in touch.
Vintage 2021
Grapes are picked and wines are made. Mostly resting in bottle for release early this Summer. 2021 was a tricky vintage as normal: cold, wet and grey. Conditions not withstanding the fruit we picked was ultimately very high quality, we just had to wait as late as early November to pick it.
Pre vintage 2021
The lack of posts since the snow days of pruning back in February are simply because I’ve essentially been living in the vineyard.
The cold weather seemed to last for ever early this year and as a result we had very late bud burst. A blessing and a curse as we missed the hard frosts that could have wiped out the young buds, but we were 3 weeks or so late out of the blocks which is difficult time to make up. Glorious weather over Easter pushed the wines on, but we had cool and damp conditions mostly, then it all cheered up for 10 days. 10 days that meant we had more or less perfect flowering and fruit set. It was still late though. Here we are on the last day of August, it’s 15 degrees, over cast and threatening to rain. Veraison is upon us but not widely so we could really do with a sunny September to get what is a tremendous crop of healthy looking grapes to ripeness.
Regent grapes undergoing veraison 
Pinot Gris 
Well tended neat rows of vines
End of Harvest 2020
So the grapes have been picked and vineyard is taking on its Autumnal colours. The winery has wine in various stages of bubbling away, and there is 2 minutes respite until the round of bottling starts.
The 2019 Italian wines are in bottle and the new labels look tremendous (thanks to Vanessa Stone and David Hopkins). The English wines are all coming together and looking very pretty, there will be some lovely fizzy stuff in the late Spring of 2021. All in all there is plenty to be grateful for despite the ongoing wretchedness of the global situation.
Pre-vintage 2020
As always we’re in the sprint finish phase before harvest when the To Do list seems endless but the grapes ripening is creating a rather hard deadline for getting it all done.
The Italian wines from the 2019 vintage are heading for bottle after a very restful time spent of the lees in tank. I’ll post a full update once they are safely ensconced in glass but they are looking fantastic and I’m in excited about releasing them. Right now we are looking at the last of the 2018 wines coming over from Italy so they should see us through until the new wines are ready for release. The new labels are awaiting final rubbing stamping by the legal departments, and once again I am indebted to Vanessa Stone for her artwork https://vanessastoneartist.com/ There are 3 wines/labels from 2019 in Italy, the Orange Moscato and the Barbera (aka The Italian Red) now joined by a Field Blend of indigenous Piedmontese varietals with a commissioned label (still under wraps, so big reveal later).
The English vineyard is looking terrific. It is the major project for 2020 and beyond. The Leicestershire Wolds are not perhaps the obvious place to plant vines, but there are good and compelling reasons why it works, and there are several vineyards to prove it.
We are looking after 12 year old vines (a mix of Pinots and the usual English suspects) over 2 hectares. The site is a long South facing slope with a bedrock of 200 million year old Jurassic limestone mud whose fine grained structure is mainly carbonates of coral and shell. This is overlain with 2 million year old glacial deposits featuring lumps of flint and ironstone. All in all an amazing patch, that despite the perils of English Summers has the potential to produce amazing grapes even as far North as it is. The winery is one of those jobs on the To Do list and is coming along but there are a couple or three things to get in place before we’re ready to start fermenting: nothing like a deadline. 5 weeks or so and counting!
Not Vinitaly
Late April, the cherry blossom, gorse and rapeseed is out and lots of wines are freshly bottled. Where are we? Verona for Vinitaly of course!
Except that of course we are not. Covid-19 has seen to that, so here we all are in Lockdown, and it really does seem to be everyone. The skies are free from vapour trails and the supermarkets have run out of flour. Again.
The 2019 wines from The English Winemaker are actually still in tank, which is what we had decided in any case, but the logistics of bottling are a bit interesting due to lack of staff, and well, bottles. Businesses across the world are feeling the effect, and the wine industry is no different. I should be out and about selling the end of the 2018s and drumming up interest for the 2019s, instead I’m not.
On a happy note we re-tasted the tank sample of the Field Blend, so it had been in bottle (not properly bottled, just squirted out of the tank into glass) for about 8 weeks. It has calmed down quite impressively, it is still super aromatic and the tannins are still quite feisty but there is more harmony and it definitely developing in the right way. The 2018 Dry Moscato “Mascot” was also revisited, so about 15 months in bottle, and it is looking top notch even though I say so myself.
If you are interested in getting hold of some of the 2018s (Barbera and skinsy Dry Moscato), or would like to express interest in the 2019s once there are samples available please do get in touch.
A little bit of press
The English Winemaker as featured in Gravitas Magazine
Winemaker dinner at The Olive Branch in Clipsham
Great Food Club and The Olive Branch are presenting The English Winemaker and friends. I will be showing my wines alongside those of a couple of friends (who won’t make it on the night!): Theo Coles of The Hermit Ram in New Zealand and Andrea Faccio of Villa Giada in Piedmont.
7 courses and six wines, Thursday 25th of April 2019, get in touch with The Olive Branch to book.
Full details can be found here:
North West Italy 2018 pre-harvest
In the heart of the Moferrato, South of Asti, grows arguably the finest Barbera and Moscato in Piedmont, so the finest on the whole of the peninsula. This means very little of course next to the greatness of Nebbiolo, but the fruit from these limestone and sandy marls on softly rolling hills produce world class wines.
Sweet fizzy and low alcohol wine might not be your cup of tea, but the apparent simplicity of these wines belies their extraordinary character. Not only that but they age gracefully and rewardingly, if you see an old Moscato d’Asti languishing at the back of a shelf in a wine shop, grab it, you will be surprised. After a gawky phase at 2 years the secondary development mirrors the primary but in a more robust way. At 8 years old they can quite extraordinary.
There is pressure from producers for there to be a DOC/G for a dry Moscato wine, but the wheels of Italian bureaucracy being what they are this could take a decade to achieve. In the meantime we have to label with made up names with Vino Bianco on the label and absolutely cannot, not ever, put “Moscato” on the label.
Barbera from around Nizza Monferrato finally achieved official recognition as being of exceptional quality in 2014, Barbera Nizza DOCG is the top of the quality tree and in some ways put the Barbera d’Alba/d’Asti debate to rest. This is where The English Winemakers fruit for the 2018 Whole Bunch Barbera will be sourced from.
