England
Well, this was interesting. The sun-drenched 2018 vintage had given the UK’s winemakers a LOT of ripe fruit to play with – and play with it they did. Given this was widely recorded as the ‘vintage of a generation’, we were expecting our judges to fall in love with what they were seeing here, but in fact the messages were, surprisingly, rather mixed.
Some of the reds still, perplexingly, suffered from underripeness, and, as for the whites, while three Golds (and seven medals) was a decent performance, it’s not markedly better than any other recent years in this competition, when the entries came from supposedly inferior vintages. Our tasters generally quite liked the (usually cheap) young, fresh, lifted styles, but they weren’t always sure about the more ambitious, expensive, oakier versions.
Still, any category that manages both a Critics’ Choice and a By The Glass Trophy must be doing something right… Weirdly, this part of SWA managed a very British paradox of being both exciting and average at the same time.
From The Tasting Teams
‘I was expecting the red wines to be slightly better than they were. It’s better for producers to go for lighter styles at the moment and get that fine-tuned.’ Carolina W Seibel, Comptoir Cafe and Wine
‘You can tell [in the reds] that they’re pushing the grape varieties to their limit. Some of the fruit is underripe, and there were some green tannins coming through. At the moment there’s too much vintage variation, so the question is whether the consumer will have confidence.’ Tom Forrest, team leader
‘They should stick with gin. It’s a climate suitable for crisp, light, aromatic wines, but they’re trying to make something with oak for richness and complexity. The result is just unbalanced.’ Erik Simonics, Annabel’s
‘They’re trying to make more than what the grapes can give them. They’re trying to drive a Rover with an Aston Martin engine. It doesn’t work.’ Emanuel Pesqueira, Edwardian Hotels London
‘A very difficult tasting. You could see the cool climate of Great Britain. These wines were very acidic, light, delicate – and quite often unbalanced because of that. It’s a region that will benefit from rising temperatures.’ Andres Ituarte, team leader
‘I really enjoyed the reds. There was good value and style. One of the strong skills of these wines is their elegance. And the prices weren’t bad at all.’ Mattia Tabacco, Oeno
‘The whites had acidity but not complexity. In some, the oak gave complexity, but then there wasn’t any fruit.’ Alonso Abed, Trivet
‘I think there is a market for still English wines, but maybe they need to think about what they’re doing.’ Tom Forrest, team leader