The Grange Estate Pink Sparkling, Hampshire

Description

The Grange Estate Pink Sparkling, is a dry English Rose sparkling wine from Hampshire. It is a blend of mainly Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir with a little Chardonnay.

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. A new winery was completed in record time for the 2022 vintage and the inhouse head winemaker is Harry Pickering. 

The grapes for the The Grange Estate Pink Sparkling were hand-picked and whole-bunch pressed. 85% of the juice was fermented in stainless steel tanks with the rest going into 4th-fill oak barrels. About 50% of the wine in stainless steel vats was allowed to undergo malolactic fermentation. The individual parcels of wines were then tasted and the base wines were blended to produce the cuvee. The pale, pink colour is produced by adding a small amount of a fruit-laden, barrel-fermented red wine made from The Grange’s ripest Pinot Noir grapes. The wine then underwent the traditional secondary fermentation in bottle followed by nearly three years on the lees prior to disgorging.

The Grange Estate Pink Sparkling is a blend of 60% Pinot Meunier and 40% Pinot Noir with a small portion of base wine from the ageing solera.