Wine of the week: a ravishing white from England

published 5 May 2017

2016 Plumpton Estate, Single Vineyard Chardonnay/Pinot Noir/Meunier, England (£15, Marks & Spencer).

Plumpton College is the UK's most important seat of learning when it comes to grape-growing and wine-making. This fascinating wine was made by Plumpton College student Joseph Arthur, who won Marks & Spencer's 2016 Scholarship for outstanding academic performance.

Joseph crafted this wine from grapes grown in a single vineyard, using French oak barrels to ferment the wine in. Essentially, Joseph has made a still version of a sparkling wine, for his is the recipe for 90% of champagne. This is nothing short of inspirational because it allows us to look beyond where the bubbles might have been and see the wine, shimmering in all of its naked glory.

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And what a sight it is, with floral notes, moments of honeysuckle and briar coupled with the subtle, vanilla coming from the oak. This all makes for a hedonistic, pheromonal scent. The palate is searingly dry, as you might expect from a white wine from our climes, but it is very long and rather masochistically ravishing.

It reminds me of a top-grade Juranon Sec a French wine made from obtuse grapes, loaded with acidity, but with an equally mesmerising perfume. Good work, Joseph this will get the industry talking and the consumers licking their lips. We are starting to find our feet in the English wine trade and it is looking very tasty indeed.

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (MatthewJukes.com).

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’. He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner.

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy. His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.