The English Bubble – Review of Everflyht Brut NV and Rose de Saignee 2019 with Richard Bampfield MW


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Today on The English Bubble, Everflyht Brut NV and Rose de Saignee 2019 with Richard Bampfield MW.

The Everflyht Brut NV reflects the current estates planting and combines Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Meunier; hand-picked from the single estate vineyard and with “light touch” winemaking keeping each plot separate and using a mix of stainless steel tanks, old oak barrels and a handful of new oak to suit the fruit personality in each block. Fresh and generous in style, this traditional method wine has been aged for 20 months on the lees bringing a robust depth with a lasting elegance to the wine. The light smoky charm from reductive winemaking adds to the elegance and light touch style of these sparkling wines. Magnificent first release!

Everflyht’s estate is ten hectares with three hectares planted in 2016 of the classic varieties Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Meunier. In 2021 an additional 3.8 hectares were planted. The young vines produced a small crop in 2018 and this wine was kept as reserve wine to be blended with the wines from the 2019 harvest to create their first non vintage blend based on 2019 blended with the wines from the first vintage.

Everflyht Rose de Saignée 2019 is a blend of Pinot Noir and Meunier; hand-picked from their single estate vineyard. This is the first single estate sparkling wine to be produced at Everflyht. The Saignée method of rosé production is more complicated than adding red wine into the blend, it extracts colour from a short period of skin contact, in this 1st release just 12 hours was enough to get the colour and richness of fruit.

17/20 Rose de Saignee
“Deep, bright orange-pink. Masses of strawberries on the nose but this is one of the most unusual English pink fizzes I have ever tasted! This is an explosion of blood orange and morello cherries and pomegranate with a lashing of sumac and sweet-hot paprika. This tastes as if it should carry a label saying, Made In Morocco. Just gorgeous. Crazy outgoing, exuberant, cartwheeling flavour. Full of fireworks and joy. This is street dancing! A flash mob in a bottle! ”
17/20 Brut NV
“So good! This walks the holy-grail tightrope for sparkling wines: autolysis, acidity, fruit, sweetness. This has a flair-flare of smoke and apple blossom on the nose, toasted (to almost burnt) brioche and crispy breadcrumbs, pan-roasted chopped hazelnuts, grapefruit, nectarine. Such clear-cut, ripe, diamond-bright fruit! We watched Paloma Faith live in concert on the weekend, watching her explosive energy and quirky personality as she cut that stage up with her insane dancing and prancing and her smoky-lazy-pewter-scratched-yuzu voice, and it pretty much sums this wine up.”