Chardonnay
75cl * 12.5% ABV * Sussex, England
A lot of the accolades for this wine are surrounding the fact that this is comparable to a high quality Chablis but as someone in the industry I'm more interested in the Solera system employed by Sugrue and his team to make this wine from the 2022 and 2023 vintages. An absolutely ingenious and perhaps random way to think about making wine. Bloody Bonkers!!
But in all seriousness there has been a great deal of precision winemaking that has gone into this bottle. Fruit from chalk and flint vineyards in East and West Sussex. The 2022 vintage was aged for 18 months in new small French oak barrels an the 2023 was aged for 6 months in large, old barrels. Then the wine was blended together using the sherry solera system to fully incorporate and marry together these two wines.
17+/20 points." Tamlyn Currin, JancisRobinson.com,'"It has the rich, slow aroma of lemon-zested, sour-cream panna cotta turning New York cheesecake as it warms. But the acidity is marked on the palate – the intensity of lemon, the lemon intensity, pushing you back half a step in shock. Like stepping into a cold midnight at full moon when the light and sharpness of air cut your breath from your body. Dramatic, cut like a diamond. I'd cellar this for a couple of years'