Brits make bubbly, too, and it's headed to the U.S.
"I like global warming," a Bordeaux winemaker quipped to me several years ago. "But I hope it stops, or in 10 years, I'll be making claret in England."
A true English claret may still be a way off, but the wine world is abuzz about English bubbly. The warmest part of England, the southeastern Downs region of Sussex, counts as a cool-climate region for wine, and a string of warm vintages starting with the heat wave of 2003 has helped vintners ripen grapes enough to produce outstanding sparkling wines in the traditional champagne method.
And there's good news for wine lovers: English bubblies are reaching the mid-Atlantic market, and they offer exceptional quality and value for their price. This might be the most exciting British invasion since the Beatles came to town in 1964.
The first to arrive is Ridgeview Wine Estate, a leading English producer in Sussex, a region that claims geological and meteorological similarities with Champagne, farther east in France. That's not such a stretch. Sussex lies on the same chalk bed as Champagne and the white cliffs of Dover. And the climate is milder than we might expect when we think of England.
"We are sheltered by the continent, so we have less maritime influence than farther north or west," said Tamara Roberts, Ridgeview's chief executive officer and daughter of company co-founder Mike Roberts, on a recent visit to Washington. Sussex gets an average of 25 inches of rain annually, compared with twice that amount farther west in Cornwall.
Ridgeview makes six sparkling wines, using the traditional champagne grapes of chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier. They've been royally received: Queen Elizabeth II has served Ridgeview wines at three Buckingham Palace state dinners, including one last month welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Britain's most famous spy has not embraced his local wine, however. James Bond still favors Bollinger champagne. The French bubbly has been the "official champagne of James Bond" since "Moonraker" in 1979, and this month the company released a special 007 cuvée tied to "Spectre," the latest Bond film, sponsoring a pre-release showing in Manhattan, with free-flowing champers, to celebrate the partnership. (An attentive moviegoer might notice, however, that although champagne makes three appearances in "Spectre," it's never identified as Bollinger. )
Ridgeview has been importing a small amount of wine to New York for a few years. The company, founded in 1994, is now making a bigger push into the U.S. market. Three of the six cuvées - a chardonnay-based blend, a blanc de noirs and a rosé - are available in the Washington region through Siema Wines, thanks to Christopher Parker, a British expat who exports Virginia wine to London, and Andrew Stover of Siema. To hear them tell it, Parker and Stover courted the Roberts family over some time to prove their worthiness to represent Ridgeview. Or the delay might have had something to do with Ridgeview's not having enough bottles to go around until now; to be honest, I was enjoying the fizz so much, the story became fuzzy. Anyway, Siema's initial allotment in September was nearly all snatched up by British Airways for its lounge at Washington Dulles International Airport. A second shipment has just arrived.
Naturally, this new category of wine comes with a potential faux pas. English sparkling wine is properly called "English," not "British"; the latter describes cheap plonk reconstituted from imported concentrate. It might never supplant champagne as the world's premier bubbly, but the best examples, such as Ridgeview, rival comparably priced champagne in quality. And this year, at least, they outscore French champagne for cachet.