If you mention ‘vintage wine’ to people, they will often envisage a grand bottle that is many years old. However, when it comes to English Sparkling Wine, the term ‘vintage’ actually has a different meaning. Here, ‘vintage’ doesn’t necessarily mean that the wine is very old. Rather, a vintage English sparkling wine is one where all the base wines used to make the sparkling wine were made in the same year. So, in effect, the wine is from a single ‘vintage’.
A vintage sparkling wine can be produced in any year. However, in many cases, wine makers will only choose to produce vintages in years that they think have been particularly good for their grapes. This means that Vintage English sparkling wines will often reflect the characteristics of a particular year.
Compared to Champagne, the English Sparkling Wine scene is still very young. Nonetheless there are already a few years that have been widely recognised as very good for English Sparkling Wine. Perhaps the best in recent years have been 2014 and 2018 (think World Cup years!). Both of these yielded a range of fantastic vintage sparkling wines. Standout examples include Gusbourne’s Blanc de Noirs 2018, and Nyetimber’s ‘Tillington Single Vineyard 2014’.
Vintage sparkling wines are often of very high quality and can potentially age over many years, bringing lovely ageing flavours such as honey and spices.
Non-Vintage English Sparkling Wine
However, this doesn’t mean you should discount non-vintage sparkling wines! Non-vintage just means that the sparkling wines have been made from a blend of wines made in different years. For some sparkling wines, this will involve just a few different wines. For others, a large range of different wines go into the blend, some potentially going back many years, such as Wiston’s Brut Non Vintage.
Winemakers often try to keep their non-vintage sparkling wines very consistent year on year, and very skilfully blend a range of wines to create the same tasting wines year on year. The resulting wine has thus been made with great care.
