The Grange Estate White From Black, 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 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. 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 helps 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 The first Grange Estate wines were released in 2018 and the first wines were originally made by the team at Hattingley Valley.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. The range includes a Classic, a Pink and some still wines.

Unusually for The Grange Estate White From Black is bottled at a vintage wine. The 2020 release is made from 4 of the Grange’s different Meunier cuvées of which 40% went through malolactic fermentation (to soften the acidity) and 52% had contact with some very gentle oak for texture. It spent just 26 months on lees and was disgorged in September ’23 (to allow time for tertiary development) with 7.5 grammes of residual sugar resulting in a magnificent and luxurious balance.