Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Wonderfully evolved wine with intense and captivating baked apple nose with secondary notes of lemon and greengage, and powerful rich, round and creamy-textured palate to follow. Exuberant ripe fruit flavors and bounteous buttered toast and honey notes harmonize well with the restrained acidity and tangy, savory undercurrent.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
Tasting the 2011 Gusbourne Blanc de Blancs was a fun experience. Over the years, some wine pals have told me that the English make excellent sparkling wines. I faintly remember tasting one or two in the 1990s, but today was my first real look at a bubbly from England, and I concur with the Brits that their local vintners do indeed make excellent sparkling wines. The 2011 Gusbourne Blanc de Blancs is elegant and lively. The wine's bright green apple flavors, taut palate, and crisp aftertaste pair it perfectly with raw oysters. (Tasted: November 10, 2016, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Enthusiast
Creaminess and stone are all that is signalled on the nose. The palate opens with a generous spirit that unites green apple crispness, lemon freshness, shortbread richness and chalky depth. There is an undertow of lemon oil and lasting length. There is something generous and rounded about this wine that does not stem from dosage. Intriguing, wonderfully dry, grown-up and totally lasting. This is still taut and will gain from bottle age.
Representing the topmost expression of a Champagne house, a vintage Champagne is one made from the produce of a single, superior harvest year. Vintage Champagnes account for a mere 5% of total Champagne production and are produced about three times in a decade. Champagne is typically made as a blend of multiple years in order to preserve the house style; these will have non-vintage, or simply, NV on the label. The term, "vintage," as it applies to all wine, simply means a single harvest year.
The limestone soils of England’s southern end have proven ideal for the production of British sparkling wine. While it might seem too damp and cold for grape growing in England, recent warm summers and the onset of global warming signify great future growth for the British wine industry.