Blanc de Noirs of the Year Great Britain: Coates & Seely Blanc de Noirs La Perfide 2014
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Hampshire-based Coates & Seely is a partnership between two friends, Nicholas Coates and Christian Seely, who first met at the Institut Européen d’Adminstration des Affaires School in Fontainebleau.
In our tastings, the ‘La Perfide’ Blanc de Noirs stood out for its toasted hazelnut complexity and fine-textured, full-flavoured, rich fruit quality.Nicholas Coates went on to become a successful investment banker while Christian Seely joined the wine trade and is now managing director of the AXA Millésimes group in France. It was while commiserating over England’s defeat to South Africa in the Rugby World Cup final in Paris in 2007 that the two friends decided to go into business together and establish a winery in Hampshire’s pretty Test Valley.
Coates & Seely’s vintage wines are called ‘La Perfide’ in an ironic nod to the term ‘perfidious Albion’. Ironic because while co-owners Nicholas Coates and Christian Seely are both English, the French connection extends to the Bordeaux-based winemaking team of Stéphane Derenoncourt which is the guiding force behind all of Coates & Seely’s wines.
“We always wanted to apply French craftmanship to English terroir,” says Nicholas Coates.
From chalk soils, the ‘La Perfide’ vintage sparkling wines are made from grapes from a single year when the fruit is exceptional and lees-aged for a minimum of five to seven years, with further bottle-ageing on cork post-disgorgement. 2014 was the launch year of the ultra-stylish 2014 blanc de noirs with 90% pinot noir and 10% meunier and a low-ish dosage of four grams per litre. It was on the lees for five years and released in 2021 after a further 18 months post-disgorgement ageing.
Tristram Coates, Christian Seely, and Nicholas Coates. Coates & Seely
In our tastings, the ‘La Perfide’ Blanc de Noirs stood out for its toasted hazelnut complexity and fine-textured, full-flavoured, rich fruit quality. Although it’s more than a decade since the harvest, it still has more than enough life in it to mature for a few more years yet.
Priced at GBP £85, it is available from Coates & Seely.
