Last year we commiserated with Nyetimber for being pipped to the top spot by Langham, who beat them by the width of a coat of paint.

This year we can celebrate a victory made all the sweeter by the fact that after their inaugural win in 2021, Nyetimber, is the first English winery to have won The Real Review’s Top Wineries of Great Britain twice.

Perhaps it’s not that surprising in the light of The Battle of the Bubbles (see accompanying piece) and the fact that both prestige cuvées, the 1086 by Nyetimber 2013 and the 1086 by Nyetimber Rosé 2013 featured in the shortlist of 14 wines scoring 95 or more for our inaugural Wines of the Year awards.

We also congratulate the winners of our Wines of the Year awards.

Nyetimber achieved the most high scoring gold ribbons this year. We awarded 118 silver ribbons compared to 66 in 2024. This is in part a reflection of an overall improvement in the quality of English sparkling wine across the board, but it also takes account of the fact that we were delighted to welcome a number of excellent new wineries to the fold.

Newcomers this year include Hundred Hills from Oxfordshire, High Clandon Estate in Surrey and Wiltshire’s Domaine Hugo. Last year’s newcomers Bluestone from Wiltshire (number 8) and Candover Brook (number 16) both improved their performance on 2024. We were also delighted to welcome the return this year of old friends that for reasons of their own had been unable to participate last year, so, in from the cool climate, as it were, came Chapel Down, Black Chalk, Coates & Seely and Sugrue, all high flyers in the top 20 this year.

While the engine room of the UK’s sparkling wine production remains the golden triangle of Hampshire, Kent and East and West Sussex, it’s notable that only Hampshire’s Candover Brook of these five wineries comes from within that golden triangle. The other four show what is now being achieved outside it.

Last year’s winner, Langham followed up its victory with the runner-up award this year. It might even have topped the charts if it had included an impressive new addition to the range, the Langham Wine Estate Perpetual 1st Edition Extra Brut England NV. This wine scored well in a tasting I was involved with for the World of Fine Wine. As the first 99 points award at the Wine GB Awards this year, it took the Supreme Champion Award for best sparkling wine and best premium sparkling. Containing the best chardonnay from three vintages, 2017, 2018 and 2019, it mirrors the vintage trio style blend pioneered by Laurent Perrier’s Grand Siècle.

The use of reserves in multi-vintage wines is a growing feature of England’s sparkling wines. Sugrue South Downs Rock Story for instance is a multi-vintage blend of 2011, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2022. As we pointed out last year, we believe that holding back wines from previous years to create reserves for blending, as is standard practice in Champagne, can benefit sparkling wine in the UK both in terms of style by bringing extra richness and texture to these non-vintage blends and also because the addition of reserve wines can help iron out the inconsistencies of vintage. According to Dermot Sugrue:

“My approach to reserve wines is to build up a stock of reserves, whether as a perpetual reserve or different years kept separately. The addition of reserve makes a massive difference.”

Most wineries produce both vintage and non-vintage sparkling wines according to the character of year and the style they’re looking for. Having said that, a number prefer to produce vintage wines only. Rathfinny stick to their vintage guns, as do, for instance, Hundred Hills and Black Chalk. What is the rationale for this? Stephen Duckett of Hundred Hills is quite outspoken about it:

“I don’t buy the non-vintage thing in England. Why do we need to copy that [Champagne] strategy today, just selling the same thing over and over again in the modern world? I’d rather always be selling them something new.”

Jacob Leadley and Zoë Driver at Black Chalk aim to build complexity into the wines through focused viticulture, “working with the vine and the climate and the soils to produce fruit of a certain character”.

As the English wine industry matures, we are also starting to see the release of wines that have spent a considerable amount of time on the lees. I had the pleasure of attending a dinner hosted by the Libération Tardive Foundation (motto: Great Wines Take Time) at The Skinners Hall Wine Vaults in London earlier in the year showcasing older vintages from Hattingley Valley, Gusbourne and Breaky Bottom.

The 2013 Gusbourne Blanc de Blancs Late Disgorged, the Hattingley Valley Classic Cuvée 2010 and the Breaky Bottom Seyval Blanc Brut Cuvée Koizumi Yakumo 2010 showed exceptionally well, as did the latter in our tasting. All with more than a decade of age, the Coates & Seely Blanc de Noirs 2014 is one of our wine awards of the year, the Digby Fine English 2013 and the Sugrue The Trouble With Dreams 2009 in magnum (winner of Best of Show at this year’s Decanter World Wine Awards) both made the wines of the year shortlist and we have already sung the praises of both Nyetimber’s 2013 prestige cuvées.

Perhaps what The Real Review rankings conceal is the stealthy progress of England’s still wines, most notably chardonnay, and to an extent, pinot gris. Danbury Ridge, which came in last year’s top 10, didn’t enter this year, nor did Jackson Family Wines, whose Marbury Chardonnay we have covered in these pages this year. Both are from Essex, where recent plantings have catapulted the county to third place in the UK’s area under vine.

Also from Essex, Lyme Bay, Martin’s Lane and The Heretics all scored 90 or more for their chardonnays, as did Oastbrook (East Sussex), Black Chalk (Hampshire), Gusbourne (Kent) and Oxney (East Sussex). Distinctive new still wine styles including a superb sweet bacchus called Entice, from Hattingley Valley, and an unusual Montilla-style white, Sonny, from Sandridge Barton, are doing their bit in adding to the gaiety of the nation.

From the samples of sparkling wines submitted for this year’s tasting, there were 53 classic blends (32 vintage, 21 non-vintage) which averaged out at a score of 91.94 out of 100.

Of the other three main styles, sparkling rosé actually pipped blanc de blancs (23 of them vintage) to the post with 30 samples (19 of them vintage), averaging 92.03 as against 29 blanc de blancs, although blanc de blancs averaged the highest score, marginally, of 92.38.

There were 17 blanc de noirs (all vintage) and these averaged out at 92.24. What’s interesting here is how close the average scores were for all four major styles of sparkling wine and that there is no one style—not yet at least—that is in the ascendant.