UNDER THE SURFACE | The story behind Champagne Taittinger’s English fizz

It's been a long time coming, but the wraps are finally off the first release of Champagne Taittinger's English sparkling wine. Guy Woodward tracks its prolonged gestation and tastes the results…

Amid the mainstream press’s sometimes frenzied coverage of English sparkling wine over the last couple of decades, one angle has resonated more than most. Ever since English fizz started besting Champagne in blind tastings, the story that UK newspapers have tried to push above all others is that of Champagne houses eyeing up land in Kent, Sussex et al, in which to plant their flag and produce their own Franglais cuvée. 

Despite constant rumours along the way, there has been little evidence of such stories actually coming to fruition. Billecart-Salmon was said to have come close to making a sizeable investment, but nothing came of it. Pommery went a step further, going into partnership with Hattingley Valley to produce a wine at the Hampshire winery, and since purchasing 40ha in the county amid plans to build its own facility. But the only project that has yielded a tangible return, in the form of the launch this month of its inaugural cuvée, is Taittinger’s Domaine Evremond, the first English winery to be majority owned and operated by a grand marque. 

For McGrath, it was imperative that the venture be started from scratch and with a long-term outlook. ‘We weren’t interested in buying an existing estate, or doing what Pommery had done and collaborating with an English winery,’ he says. The search for land began, focusing on Kent, with Taittinger outlining three key criteria. Like the most prized vineyards in Champagne, the site had to be on chalk soils. It also had to be south-facing, to pick up the most sunlight hours. Finally, it should be under 100m in altitude, to protect it from the elements. The changeable UK climate was still a concern, so close to the coast would be an added benefit, where the risk of frost is mitigated by sea air. 

More soil samples were taken and visits made, with Taittinger’s preferred soil scientist and its own vineyard manager coming to approve the site. ‘Then a site plan arrived from Epernay, marked with copious “X”s,’ recalls Skelton. ‘Could we please dig around 60 holes, each at least a metre deep and wide enough to climb into?’ A JCB was hired and holes were dug. More visits, more soil samples. 

At long last, in late 2015, the site received approval from Taittinger, and the project was officially announced, with Taittinger ensuring maximum visibility by hosting the press conference in Westminster Abbey, in a nod to the legend of Charles Evremond (after whom the wine is named, and of whom, more later). The first vines were planted in 2017, yielding fledgling fruit in 2019, and a full crop in 2020. By then, Taittinger had identified another 40ha nearby, which were planted during lockdown, with the team holed up at the local Premier Inn. Today, Domaine Evremond comprises 62 hectares of vines, split between 45% Chardonnay, 45% Pinot Noir and 10% Meunier. 

In his 40+ years in the industry, Skelton says the project was ‘undoubtedly the most exciting I have worked on’. And, he adds, ‘THE most important development in the history of modern UK wine production’. ‘Apart from the symbolic significance of a top-notch French wine company investing hard-earned euros in the UK to produce a sparkling wine which is in competition with its own product, it shows a belief in a wine-producing region that is barely out of nappies.’

Not that it’s been plain sailing. Writer Henry Jeffreys, author of the hugely entertaining romp through the evolution of the English wine scene, Wines in a Cold Climate, recalls the symbolic planting of the first vines in a ‘nondescript muddy field in what felt like the middle of nowhere… on a blustery, unseasonably cold May day in 2017’. The previous week, late spring frosts had damaged vines across the country, with some growers losing 80% of their crops. ‘Combine that with all the uncertainty about the previous year’s EU referendum and you might say that Taittinger’s timing could have been better,’ he wrote. ‘Shivering outside, we sipped tea to warm us up and then strode out somewhat gingerly into the fields for the planting of the vines. The rain was horizontal. Patrick McGrath stood on a box and tried to make himself heard above the wind. As the rain got heavier, the PR team cut the speeches short.’ Jeffreys confesses that he thinks he might have mistaken his Pinot vine for Chardonnay, and planted it in the wrong spot. 

No harm seems to have been done. The inaugural Classic Cuvée is a blend of 55% Pinot Noir, 35% Chardonnay and 10% Meunier, largely (80%) from 2020 alongside 20% from 2019, blended and bottled in 2021 before spending around three years maturing on its lees. Around 125,000 bottles have been produced, with the ultimate plan to make around 350,000 a year (including a blanc de blancs, rosé and vintage) at the purpose-built winery which was completed in 2024 and opened to visitors this month. Around 2,000 lorry loads (or 83,000 tonnes) of chalk were excavated 20 metres underground – by the same contractor as dug the Channel Tunnel – to house the three-storey subterranean building which is gravity-fed and low on energy-use due to the natural cooling temperatures that eradicate the need for air-conditioning. 

The pricing of the first release, by English wine standards, is bold, at £50-55 – putting it closer to NV Champagne than English fizz. Is also flies in the face of the view of Clément Pierlot, Champagne Pommery’s chef de cave, who claimed, ‘It’s not justifiable for an English sparkling wine to cost as much as, or more than, a bottle of Champagne, with its 300 years’ history and its reserves.’ 

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