Hundred Hills Preamble Rose 2018

Hundred Hills produce vintage English sparkling wines from their boutique winery and vineyards located in the Stonor Valley, Oxfordshire. They only ever make wines from the finest grapes from their own vineyards and tightly control quality at every stage along the road, from planting vines to popping corks. From the outset Hundred Hills have chosen to produce low yielding, high quality Pinot Noir and Chardonnay and have focused hard to create outstanding chalk valley vineyards, where grapes can slowly grow and ripen on the vine every year for more than the magical hundred days. From the wooded chalk valleys of Hundred Hills emerge clean, clear wines that truly reflect a sense of time and place in the way the very best Burgundies seek to do. The wines from Hundred Hills vary year by year and their winemaking is minimalist in style allowing as pure a vintage expression of the vineyard as possible.

Vineyards: Steep chalk slopes, warmed gently through the English summer, and soils poor enough that every year the vines must struggle for survival and produce the most enticing grapes they can. From the outset Hundred Hills focused on the low yielding, high quality forms of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay that had produced so many great wines in Burgundy and Champagne during the twentieth century, now the climate of Southern England in the twenty-first. Hundred Hills carefully segmented their vineyard into ten parcels, each with their own aspect, slopes and soils, and now all filled with different Chardonnay and Pinot Noir vines.

Weather in 2018: Early flowering and a warm, lengthy season produced the perfectly ripened Pinot to create our signature vibrant rosé style. Grapes with over 100 days on the vine were gently bunch pressed, base wines created without a malolactic fermentation and softened in traditional oak casks, then aged for 18 months on lees to yield a beautiful array of floral aromas and summer fruit flavours from this exceptional English chalk valley vineyard.

Technical Information:
Grape Varieties: 60% Pinot Noir, 40% Chardonnay
Region: Stonor Valley, Oxfordshire
Lees Ageing: 18 months
Dosage: 9 g/l
Bottling date: May 2019
Disgorged: November 2020
Drink: Now to 2026

Tasting Note: A vibrant array of ripe summer strawberries and raspberries from the warm and generous 2018 vintage. Pristine red fruit notes fill the palate with a freshness uncommon in rosés from warmer climates. There is a wonderfully soft texture in this champagne, tasted blind I think a lot of people would put this in another country!