Hundred Hills Saignee Rose 2021

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.

After being destemmed and crushed, the grapes were macerated for 8 hours with regular pump-overs, then bled off the skins into small French oak barrels for fermentation. The wine was then bottled without filtering or fining and disgorged in March 2024. Very limited release with just 600 bottles bottles made.

Weather in 2021: With peak flowering on the 7th July followed by a long cool season, the 2021 vintage enabled HH to harvest late in the year as acidity dropped and complexity increased across the vineyard. The Rosé de Saignée was created from carefully selected grapes within our south-facing Hillside parcel of Pinot Noir picked on the 27th of October with 112 days on the vine.

Technical Information:
Grape Varieties: 100% Pinot Noir
Region: Stonor Valley, Oxfordshire
Lees Ageing: 18 months
Dosage: 6 g/l
Bottling date: May 2022
Disgorged: March 2024
Drink: Now to 2030

Tasting Note: The 2021 Brut Rosé de Saignée, made from pure Pinot Noir grown in the south-facing hillside vineyard on chalk soils, showcases a vibrant mid-pink color that signals body. Fermented in oak barrels with skin-macerated juice, it spent 18 months on lees. The nose reveals oak creaminess with roasted hazelnut, while the palate offers ripe cherry, more oak creaminess and a frisson of white pepper. This wine celebrates late ripeness, vibrancy, exuberance and full-fruited juiciness. A seam of white pepper and an edge of lemon lend contour, allowing the winemakers to embrace the oak treatment. A bold wine in an unusual style, it makes a lovely statement of what is possible. - Tasted by Anne Krebiehl MW