The English Sparkling Underdog | Episode 10

11:38Tom Gearing:so i don't i'm not going to say there's anyone particularly i only think there's about five or six that are probably operational profitable at the moment in the UK. The rest are carrying either huge debts because of the infrastructure that they've had to put in or the amount of investment they're putting in and they won't see operational profitability for at least another five to ten years. But some of that is their own choice because they just see to keep on building the brand, building the wine stock. Because if you're talking about sparkling wine, they're in the cellar for three four five years before they're even sold yeah so that's a lot of money to carry in terms of our journey uh you know we've we've done it all right we've done all right for our size and i think that's that's where you're going to see potentially the difficulty over the next five to ten years as you put it so i think we'll see maybe 20 main brands establish themselves as international players and then we'll see another 50 60 behind that that are known nationally yeah and then we'll see probably about 100 colloquial they're known within their county and i think that's it i think because of just hold the whole wine market in general at the moment is seeing a little bit of a tricky stage that's what fascinated me um especially the first time we spoke

13:00Luke Spalding:because it very much feels like, you know, for all the world, you're, you know, there's that kind of thinking when the overheads come into play and that you might want to then rush things, but you're obviously very big on, you know, wanting to maintain things back, make sure that you're not effectively rushing that product forward before it's ready. And, you know, I just think it's just really interesting to sort of see where English sparkling wine is versus where it could go. And obviously you can draw parallels as well to how do you then distribute. I think we sort of maybe will discuss a little bit around how the model maybe from some of those bigger houses is slightly more akin to that in the US when you have, you know, memberships to get your allocation.

13:47Luke Spalding:Almost then throwing back to kind of Bordeaux and On Promeo and how that all began, you know, many centuries ago. It's kind of just trying to rework what's worked and what hasn't in maybe other markets and try and find feet with it.

13:59Jonathan Stevenson:but i mean if you take a step back and like kind of have a bird's eye view from 50 000 feet the things that for me from an outside perspective look at it and go it's surely an inevitability and the factors that are at play here is you know the uk is the second biggest importer of champagne globally i mean i don't know what it's like on prosecco but it's got to be number one i guess it's got to be number one i would say it's pretty close it's pretty close it's gonna be up there so you know champagne prosecco two of the most well-known sparkling wines right and commercially successful you know number you know uk is a huge market for and then we also know about the british is you know there's a huge deal of patriotism and i think for british produce a lot of people buy british because they want to support local and so you know you see that in in in sort of other adjacent categories in time in terms of food and drink so you just look at that and think is there an inevitability that these things will coalesce over time i suppose the question is what is that time frame for them to come closer together and what does it take to get to that point as well i mean so covid helped yeah i don't think many people say that yeah it actually helped

15:05Tom Gearing:so covid helped get the mindset to a lot of people a lot of consumers about buying local and immediately we just saw massive growth in terms of uk sales so i think off the top of my head uk sales now uh uk wine produced if from uk producers is about 10 million bottles a year that includes a little bit of export we realistically need to get that to about 20 million bottles by 2035 okay because we're already producing on a really good year 20 million bottles right um on a bad year we're doing between nine and 11 million bottles right and we're still planting new vineyards we're one of the only regions in the world to still be planting over two three hundred hectares a year whereas a lot are still you know like if you go to bordeaux you see bordeaux the the satellite vineyards or like satellite regions have been taken up same california same in new zealand same in australia so there's a lot of positivity about england but we just we really need that momentum to start continuing to grow and we are definitely seeing that but we just need every single restaurant or every single uh hotel or every single pub to list at least one or two english wines and then you'll just see it just go i mean

16:18Jonathan Stevenson:without getting to like you know without putting you on the spot um you know does the you know does the price point of english sparkling wine provide a bit of a problem in that you know you have to look at it as a premium product right the average price of a good english working wine is priced at a premium level especially for wine which for a lot of just everyday consumers puts it maybe out of their price range or what they're willing to consider and then immediately you're kind of comparing it to, okay, what would I get for the same in champagne? Right, that's a consumer perspective. Yeah. Not necessarily my perspective, but you can understand where that might cause a little bit of...

16:51Tom Gearing:I mean, yeah, we're up against probably the biggest brand on the planet. Can I have a glass of champagne? Yeah. Like, that is probably one of the hardest sayings to beat. Yeah. What I would say is champagne is, and we were just talking about this just beforehand, I think champagne is seeing a price hike, and I actually really admire their play, which is great, but it's also allowing us to open up market for the UK because we are actually holding price. And we're obviously getting a lot more support from the supermarkets, which is helping consumers get more English wine. And I think going back to one of your earlier questions about quality, I think what I, and also having to wait, I think what we're all aware of producers is we have one shot to a new customer.

17:42Tom Gearing:If we do not exceed or match their expectations when they buy a bottle of wine, they will never come back to the category. They will go back to champagne or they'll go back to Prosecco. So there's a lot riding on English wine at the moment in a nutshell.

17:56Luke Spalding:That's interesting that you reference, to your point, I think continued growth in the champagne sector, which, to be fair, in our world is one of the most obvious places to be looking at the moment for upside and growth because it's been a fantastic performing region. Interesting to think that actually that just opens up that slight layer of dissipation in price between the top Grand Marques and top vintages for English sparkling wine.

18:24Tom Gearing:Don't get me wrong, they're doing a blinder because they're doing what Burgundy did. Whereas Bordeaux expanded their vineyards, burgundy held held held everything tight yeah and if it became a scarcity champagne is doing exactly the same they'll have bad vintages if you still want us you've got to pay this much yeah which is opening the market up for english wine quite nicely yeah look i mean i've always

18:48Jonathan Stevenson:been a big proponent of english wine ever since i made a national embarrassment of myself on tv calling it uh english wine sparkling okay uh multiple times but yeah despite those faux pas

19:02Luke Spalding:that's why i got in there first because i knew you're going to bring it up but despite those

19:05Jonathan Stevenson:faux pas you know honestly genuinely you know being a massive proponent um especially when the quality is there and i think you know cult wines it's always been like a go-to to have kind of a house english sparkling that we use especially for events and it's also great for our types of events because everyone anticipates or expects to be given a champagne so it's quite good you know handing out sparkling you know on arrival for example a particular event and then kind of letting people know later on after they've kind of told you they definitely think it's champagne you know it's an english sparkling and that's yeah that's in some instances that is the best way to kind of to your point get that initial reaction from consumers around the quality because that's where you've got to deliver on on the first point yeah i think i mean i don't like being

19:44Tom Gearing:compared too much about uh to to champagne we are our own category we do have i don't like us being our soil has been compared to be the same even though that's what a lot of english producers do we are not the same it's like having twins and then growing up in different different families okay the bedrock might have been the same at one point like danny tavito and arnie schwartz exactly

20:10Tom Gearing:but you know we've had so much geographical change and our climate is completely different you know the best we can get into in terms of climate were basically where champagne was in 70s yeah we've produced some fantastic vintages but realistically the geological geological values of of english is is completely different because we've had ice ages where france has not we've had cooler cooler winters wetter winters where france is not and warmer climates or frances are warm climates where we have had cooler climates so the soils are different okay the climate's different we have a lot fresher profile we have that more acidic kind of like like fresher acidity coming into play we have green apple and citrus all all there adding that that those layers of complexity if they're given time yeah which you know is what we try and do yeah look i think it's a great segue

21:02Jonathan Stevenson:because you know i wanted to spend um a bit of time asking you about obviously what you're doing at everfly and and generally just around sort of your philosophy when it comes to you know making a sparkling wine um so i think yeah i mean it'd be great to understand i mean it's been kind of well publicized sort of your approach to sort of regenerative farming and in your approach and your sort of interest and as you've said yourself on this pod around sort of viticulture so if you could sum up your own personal philosophy right now like how would you describe it so regen is

21:31Tom Gearing:something that i just fell into in about 2019 2020 where ben ben sam gave me the space which was we we start to remove stuff so the first thing we removed was all insecticides so we've never used insecticides since 2019 then we started removing all uh synthetic fertilizers so these are all inputs then we started to look at how much water we're putting into site in terms of when we're spraying we've tried to recycle as much as we can and then we tried to move away from systemic or conventional spray programs into organics or biostimulants to help basically vine health yeah get the soil right in a nutshell get the soil right soil right should then feed the feed the vine have a really healthy balanced vine should produce really high quality crops consistently no matter what the weather or at least be able to fend off some some issues with the weather it's a bit trickier than that but because you're dealing with chaotic systems yeah um it's chaotic biological systems but the the idea is basically you're getting a more truer fruit yeah that can

22:38Jonathan Stevenson:then grow sustainably in this country yeah that's the theory yeah haven't seen it work yet no i mean look i think i think it's a great philosophy to have and i think you know i always use a really bad analogy i don't know if you agree or disagree but my analogy for people that may be less experience around wine is is is around sort of you know michelin star chef you know which is you know they you know with all the best ingredients in the best kitchen in the world they're going to be able to cook you a three-star meal okay if you take you know um you know claire smith and give her ingredients from sainsbury's basics like she'll still make a great meal don't get me wrong but it's not going to be at that level and flip the other way around despite me thinking i'm a great chef if i went into her kitchen with her ingredients i would nowhere near be able to recreate anything that she can in terms of what she puts on the plate and i think the analogy for me there is just around sort of like the first place any great wine has to be is in the vineyard with producing good quality fruit because without good quality fruit doesn't matter what you do in the in the vinification process it doesn't matter what you do in the cellar it doesn't matter what approach you take you know you're not going to make a great wine it has to start with the product that comes from the vines it has to i think we generally see that a lot with

23:49Tom Gearing:the fruit that comes off our fields that we manage, mainly because of just, I'm not going to lie to me saying this, on paper, Everflight shouldn't work.

23:59Jonathan Stevenson:The site should not work. Controversial.

24:01Tom Gearing:No, you might not have to wear this, but let's, so Everflight on paper, if you're looking at a textbook in terms of.

24:08Jonathan Stevenson:That's like the main quote we're going to take away. In terms of viticulture should not work.

24:15Tom Gearing:Okay, the site should not work. You're digging it deeper. Okay. But, and that's what, you know, when I met Ben and Sam and we went around the Everflight estate, at the time it was called Chalk House, and their house there on the estate is called Chalk House. We walked around the whole estate and I was just like, we're on clay and we're in the lowest point. We've got a lot of drainage issues. We've managed to fix that. They put money in. We've really spent time on, like, evaluating the site and getting it into the right place. It's a frost pocket. Again, that causes issues. We've got wind exposure.

24:47Tom Gearing:That causes issues. but it also helps us in terms of the disease reduction. So there's all these minuses, but with the regen and how we manage it, because I do believe the human hands in a cool climate or a pioneering area has more of an influence than anything in terms of climate or soil. It's that kind of influence it has on the site. We've managed to actually make it work. We time and time again beat the odds and produce an amazing fruit that then goes into our wines. The only time it's ever failed is 2024. Yeah. And we lost everything.

25:25Jonathan Stevenson:Yeah.

25:26Tom Gearing:And that wasn't just us. You know, that was countrywide. That was Europe-wide. It was a very, very much bigger producer. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was a challenging year. But I think, testament to Ben and Sam, we just basically brushed ourselves down, got up, and we just went the next day, where do we go next?

25:44Jonathan Stevenson:Yeah. And start again. What would be interesting, I think, maybe for listeners at home, if we just do a quick like almost like a crib sheet of what is everfly in terms of the different cuvées you make um the great varieties involved in those different cuvées and maybe just a headline like how you describe each of them just so people at home if they're interested in in drinking and

26:02Tom Gearing:tasting so everfly is is basically we have we specialize in sparkling wine that's all we do we don't do stills we were thinking of doing stills but we've decided not to and we do cuve uh addition range of cuvées one is in front of us uh or and then we've got our late release which is basically the cuve but aged for five years six years in cellar so a lot more cellar aging little more uh structured to it um so whereas the cuve in its original form is more forward in terms of toire and like that fruit driven we then see how the cellar work comes into play with barrels and and then that time in leads in in bottle and then we have our blanc noir

26:42Jonathan Stevenson:so they'll be aged in like oak barriques first for the age all our wines have a lot of oak yeah so

26:47Tom Gearing:we age in oak barrique for about anywhere between five and six months before blending right and then

26:53Jonathan Stevenson:it goes into intersect into bottle and that's even for the extended aging it's just longer on just

26:57Tom Gearing:long longer longer on lease yeah but then we have five years in lease out disgorge and then six months on cork before release so that's the late release that's a really nice addition to our range then we have the blanc noir which is our one of our first vintages we're definitely a pinot site everfly excels in pinot noir um ammonia and you know chardonnay is sometimes a bit hit and miss with our site but pinot noir is excel so all our wines tend to be pinot dominant yeah which is different to a lot of english wines most of them are chardonnay dominant and for an example like

27:34Jonathan Stevenson:the cuvee free that we've got here what sort of blend we're looking at so we're looking almost at

27:37Tom Gearing:50 50 blend of chardonnay and and pinot was a pinot monia put together whereas normally you'd find 60 70 chardonnay and the rest pinots so we really do lean on the pinots quite heavily yeah for that characteristic that they give us a bit more warmth a bit more breadth especially in the mid-palate um i see wines as shapes so if i start describing like cones and diamonds stay with me that's how i do it or circles or balls um and then we've got the rose de sinier which is like

28:09Jonathan Stevenson:kind of our cult wine now without yeah yeah but yeah it's our cold wine it's feel to bottle

28:18Tom Gearing:basically we we hand harvest everything on site but these ones we actually hand harvest from particular rose for the rose de sinier macerate them together both pinot while pinot monia uh the 22 vintage that we're currently on 22 hours in maceration and it's literally just trying to take that vineyard that vintage all the way through to the consumer really low always the same plot always the same blocks not necessarily the same rose right okay interesting so just on site just on site let's say we're all single estate we don't get any grapes in we don't buy anything else we're not like negotiants everything comes from the sites up one site that we managed which is only seven hectares which is tiny yeah but it's handy stems yeah we're not not that bad but yeah it's um it's it's just really just trying to capture all of that that quality from the vintage and we don't always make it so and that's one thing that you know ben sam have got well behind really really quick is If it's not good, we don't do it.

29:21Tom Gearing:If it's not ready, we won't release it. If it's not right, we won't make it.

29:25Jonathan Stevenson:I think it's great for people to hear that because it just kind of talks to the artisanal nature of English sparkling wine at this current juncture because I suppose there probably isn't really any mass-produced English wine at this stage, is there?

29:38Tom Gearing:I mean, what would you class volume-wise as mass-produced?

29:43Jonathan Stevenson:I suppose just in some of the vineyard practices that you would see generally at kind of much higher volume produced wines i mean we are seeing

29:53Tom Gearing:machine harvest now come in yeah um obviously because some english wine producers are now trying to really go heavily into stills right and obviously we need to then hit a certain price point yeah so i understand that point that why why go into machine and machine harvesters now are getting so advanced they're pretty good um i think when a machine harvester learns how to whole bunch pick then I think that would be the game changer. Especially for Champagne, England, how we are set up.

30:20Luke Spalding:I think that would be the big one.

30:22Tom Gearing:If you can have a machine run through the night, a whole bunch of picking rather than just bashing the vines and just getting the grapes off, I think that would be the big change. But we'll see. I think we're five to six years off for that one. Technology is coming. The technology is there.

30:39Luke Spalding:yeah and i i mean i just think already just in my still relatively um i would say you know this this this whole market for me is something i'm trying to dive a bit deeper into but i just think it's fascinating as far as i'm looking at the project and and knowing obviously you had the challenge in 2024 um just sticking to your guns with with what effectively is a much more specialist version of what's already in quite a small market it strikes me that if you can get this right and and obviously really hope you do i mean what we have in the glass here i was going to say maybe a bit more detail on this because it's fantastic thank you yeah well we're hoping to go for every

31:19Tom Gearing:single award under the planet this year with this wine um because i think it's in a good spot so yeah this is this is what this is where we have probably the most wine making influence you know felix does a great job with us in terms of sourcing the right ones obviously we get our own barrels in so we deal with four coupages across france um and then we kind of put certain parcels into from from each day of picking into these barrels or tank or amphoras um and then we just basically start bouncing each one off each other and see where it goes we have definitely a style now with this and one of the again one of the going back i keep on going back to how much we've put into this you know the 2018 harvest we totally sacrificed and put it into reserve wine we didn't make a wine from it it was great but we didn't make it we made a reserve wine to go into these future wines to build the base yeah and that's a solara system so every year we top up what's the base for the cuvee free so basically cuvee free is 2021 vintage yeah one of it was a really really tricky year but actually looking at it now i think it's one of my best right because it was so tricky yeah going back to that underdog yeah i think in 21 bit like 24 if you made one or two mistakes that was it you were going to lose everything.

32:30Tom Gearing:Yeah. Yeah. So it was great to get a really decent vintage off in 21. And then the acidity profile that's come with that cooler vintage has really started to pay dividends in terms of the structure in the wine. You kind of get that real nice core in the wine. And then you've got that nice diamond at the front. So it's kind of like really, really pointy. You can kind of see the shoulders come out with the oak and the MLF. So malolactic fermentation, we do 100%. And then it just tapers in. So it's like really nicely tapers in. It's almost like a kite.

32:59Jonathan Stevenson:shape i think the thing for me that was immediately um impressive is the nose the aromas on the nose it's so beautiful it's so perfumed it's really attractive and it's an it's a it's a bouquet that i just keep going back to yeah i mean you could smell that all day it's just that kind of spring flowers it smells like this when it smells that kind of like spring just going into summer just gets you into that sort of mood and i agree with you 100 i mean i'm i think i've spoken spoken about it on the pod before um you know my personal uh tasting you know i like you know acid driven wines that's something that you know i enjoy a lot and so i completely agree with that in terms of having that acidity but you know i don't think you can dumb down like the the quality of the fruit in there as well and and the ripeness and just the silkiness and the the you know the fine really fine bubbles there which give this lovely textural feel at the same time it's not overpowering it's not too much on the tongue but just kind of alongside that kind of really polished it will match through in the middle and that acidity at the finish and it got a nice finish like nice salinity to it at the end yeah and you know the first thing you're thinking about is i can't wait to have a next sip of that i'll tell you it's only two grams of dosage

34:05Tom Gearing:yeah so super wow um that all of that quite like quality of of like fruit is obviously driven from the vineyards and that's what we really champion it is our cornerstone to overfly is is the vineyard is the estate yeah because we can control that um or i can try and control it yeah it's a it's a false pretense um but yeah i mean for me this wine is it just sums up everfly in a glass yeah and you know english wine is getting more and more like that you know you can find now as i keep on saying english wine across the board you will find really really good english wines yeah no matter

34:43Jonathan Stevenson:where you look now and what's the sort of price point on this one retails at 30 pounds a bottle

34:48Tom Gearing:yeah so right in the keen spot for for for most most consumers which is where we wanted it to be you know i'm a student of wine i want the wines to be accessible and ben's i'm gone board with that pretty quick that we want our wines to be accessible yes we've got some sneaky things in the pipeline that are going to be a bit more higher yeah yeah yeah um and we're looking forward to releasing those um but we want this yeah i mean you can be you can be clever with that as

35:13Luke Spalding:well right because obviously if you get following at this level yeah like with any anything not just within wine but i do think that's that's really going to be crucial to your point around brand And even I'm just thinking back to what you said around hoping that not just for your, you know, your wines, but English sparkling wine being more visible, more accessible in pubs and places like that. But I do think there's that massive then sort of we kind of touched on it last podcast where last episode where. The people in the very last point of sale, whether it's a sommelier at a restaurant or I do think it's really important to make sure that it's placed in the right areas, because in the wrong hands at the wrong pub, people are going to fuck without the context.

35:54Luke Spalding:They're not maybe going to... Yeah, for sure. But you are seeing, I think in London,

35:57Jonathan Stevenson:I see a lot more pubs now that have, you know, the house champagne will be English. Yeah. And you are starting to see that take up a little bit more.

36:03Tom Gearing:I think in the South, we've definitely got it. Yeah. It's when you go further north. Yeah, of course. Like Cheshire, Manchester, where I'm from, you know, that seems to be still tricky, going even further up to Newcastle, Leeds. I'm up to Scotland tomorrow, so I'll let you know how that one looks. so you know it's it's it's it's tricky we just need because consumers there are more brand driven do you think yeah price driven brand driven i think it's still it's still the problem and just knowledge you know people may be not aware still of english wine because we've got so many wine estates now in the in the southeast within 20 minutes 30 minutes of london the education is so much more there yeah whereas all the availability is so much there yeah compared to

36:48Luke Spalding:the north i still thought you were going to say at least five to ten pounds more per bottle having just tasted that just firsthand i was yeah that packs a punch yeah i think that that is significantly good value for money um and then that's that's the thing because i was i have to get told off for referencing this but um uh when i had some time over in the us um a big thing that brands struggle with is that the disparity between the price people end up paying having been through layers of basically margin taking yeah and how that can really quickly impact the brand i think that's something just to be very cute with because suddenly from 30 pounds good value or exceptional value it can get to double that on the table somewhere because they you haven't been as maybe or they've not been as sort of listen they haven't listened as well to kind of how you want them to price yeah i think in the localized market that can be that could be really quite a powerful tool to make sure it it just has the right assimilation with the price and the brand

37:49Tom Gearing:and how you want to take it forward i mean funny enough i was having this conversation over lunch just earlier um duty and vat in this country is not helping us um and exports as well you know we we've come so close to having us exports over the last two years and unfortunately the the word of Taris has put one or two importers off over the last

38:11Luke Spalding:12 months, 18 months.

38:14Tom Gearing:So that's been a barrier at the moment, but hopefully soon we might see it go over to the US. We've got two exports at the moment and two markets at the moment. The UK is, we are seeing at least 10-20 % of all our wines now go export.

38:30Jonathan Stevenson:Really? Wow, amazing. Is it a core market, you would say?

38:34Tom Gearing:Norway seems to be the biggest. Okay. Or the Nordics and then the US. And then I think Japan, Asia will really start to hit.

38:43Jonathan Stevenson:But do you know what? It makes a lot of sense to me because I feel like the Scandinavians are such a well-educated market for wine. We know so many big collectors over there. And obviously because they don't have a – well, I know there's some wineries over there, but generally speaking there's no domestic wine markets. They're quite a good temperature check for wine in general because obviously the French and the Italians are going to be very patriotic, understandably, for their own produce. So you're not going to see a lot of exports to those countries. But to have a place like Scandinavia, I think that's actually a good testament to the quality, the underlying quality of the products, because they're only going to be importing stuff that she thinks is high enough quality.

39:16Tom Gearing:I think the engagement we've had, especially with the Norwegian market that we've had so far, and I can speak for a lot of UK producers, is just massive. Yeah. Like really, it is game changing for a lot of producers, just how much they've taken on. It fits with basically their food. and also their price point. They really engage with it.

39:37Jonathan Stevenson:In terms of the style because of the freshness of the English wine.

39:40Tom Gearing:Yeah, acidity. Same for the Asian market. Pairs well with kind of that cuisine. Absolutely pairs 100%. And we seem to have massive engagement with Soms. Like, you know, there's a real big drive from the Soms over there that would want to like showcase these wines. The Monopoly as well because they're Monopoly driven. So it's all government controlled in terms of the shops. Yeah. They too also are massively behind it.

40:02Jonathan Stevenson:so it's been good support. Might be a weird question but do you kind of identify yourself more with a kind of grower champagne movement in Champagne versus say the big houses because I suppose that's kind of representative of the size and structure of

40:14Tom Gearing:So if you came down to Everflight or you I probably can again speak for a lot of English wines I would say we're in the grower territory. You know I've spent a couple of years pre-COVID going around Champagne visiting loads and loads of little grower estates and I see more I resonate more with them than any big mark at the moment now. can't speak for Nightimba or anything like that or Gus Bourne because they're obviously they're the big players for sure in this country and they're producing over, you know, Nightimba especially is over 2 million bottles a year now I was going to say because of

40:48Luke Spalding:your rapid rise to where you are now and obviously there's been different stages to that, you know, only probably the more recent few years have you been immersed in this project and the viticulture elements, I was going to ask to that point, is there sort of like a creative sort of yearning to try and get around to some more international projects, particularly obviously in France? Or do you feel like because the UK is... I don't think I'm good enough. Okay.

41:14Tom Gearing:Well, I would say otherwise. No, no. Honestly, I think there's a lot more people out there that have done this for a lot longer than I and have exposed themselves to far more regions than me. I would love to go out and try my hand in different regions. The issue is I have a mortgage. I now have a child of three weeks old. Yeah. And I don't think I can up sticks and go. No. But I would like to try and see as much as I could. So I'm hoping to go to New Zealand soon and see some regen projects over there. Go over to California, which is massive into regen, and learn from those guys. South Africa as well, I think, we're seeing some really, really amazing projects.

41:56Tom Gearing:I think...

41:57Luke Spalding:So do you find yourself immersed in... Well, it's still work, I guess, but in terms of kind of research and trying to stay close to the regen side of what is obviously making your project unique. I would like to do a PhD. I've got a PhD in the making.

42:12Tom Gearing:I've just got to decide about what it's going to be. But it's definitely viticulturally led. I think regen obviously is a buzzword at the moment, and everyone's like there's a lot of talk about it, about how it's going to change things. I'm just one person. there is there is many many many people with far bigger estates than i and have more money than i and have more time than i uh to to really like hone in on on region and what it's all about and really drive it um but we'll see we'll see where i go we'll see where the challenges are i think for me in this climate viticulture in in england and and mixing region into it or organics is a big big challenge not for the faint-hearted whereas it might be slightly easier in other climates i'm not trying to say that it's it's easy for people in california because they have other challenges but it's drier yeah and yeah drier is easier yeah i might get slated for that

43:14Jonathan Stevenson:yeah um question is are english wines collectible yes 100 sparkling wine for sure

43:23Tom Gearing:you know we can age you know our blanc de blancs blanc de was we can age those 10 15 years you know i remember when i was at ridgeview we were always saying you know buy this blanc de blanc and you can drink it now do you think a lot of people are buying and aging or do you think a lot is immediate consumption at the moment um i would say a lot is for immediate consumption yeah i would say more and more producers are producing special coups that they are suggesting to either their own wine clubs or dealing with other merchants that are then saying HD's their special. I recently saw a vertical tasting of Nightimba from 1990.

44:05Tom Gearing:I think it was 1992 all the way through to 2007.

44:10Jonathan Stevenson:Organised by them or private? Private. Wow, interesting. That's interesting.

44:14Tom Gearing:So there is obviously people starting to happen. I mean, the brand awareness needs to increase. I think people's knowledge of just how similar the profile is in terms of how ageable they can be compared to champagne because champagne is massively collectible now. When I first got into collections… I mean, obviously, acidity levels were suggested.

44:33Jonathan Stevenson:It has ageability, right? I mean, that's it.

44:34Tom Gearing:Talking to some MWs that I know really well, they see with that acidity profile that it will just keep on going and progressing. It obviously depends whether you do malolactic fermentation or not, and keep it straight. you know Sugru he's one of the big ones yeah winemakers that does not do MLF and his wines age for ages and ages and ages are beautifully aged yeah or you can drink them straight away yeah if you really want to go for that like higher acidity yeah so I think I think any top

45:07Jonathan Stevenson:tips so if anyone was out there thinking you know I'd love to add some English wines to my seller to my collection from a long-term aging perspective collectability perspective like what

45:18Tom Gearing:would be your top tips um basically i think from what can i go personal here yeah yeah yeah um when i go into collecting the the old thing was buy two cases buy one case to drink and buy one case to sell or you know invest in now i would say buy four cases yeah okay buy one case to drink one case to sell one case to gift and then one case to pass on pass on right okay we like to hear that okay that's great we'll use that four xing customer purchases yeah well you're fleeing my but i think that's it um in terms of where i would i would start collecting i think you've got to i think you've got to have i think collecting is no longer about brands i think you've got to have a personal touch with the vineyard.

46:07Tom Gearing:So I would say go down to your local vineyards, see what you think of them, and then start collecting. Obviously, the big ones is Nightinba, Gusborn. I would say could age really, really well. Suga would age really well. Langham, possibly.

46:22Jonathan Stevenson:So outside the obvious names of Gusborn and Nightinba, what would be your top three? God, well, Everfly, obviously.

46:28Tom Gearing:Huh? Everfly, obviously. Yeah, obviously.

46:29Jonathan Stevenson:I mean, we would echo that. Yeah. So Everfly's in the top three. Yep. and of your four cuvées if you were just purely looking one for long term aging which one would you go for

46:44Tom Gearing:I would actually we haven't released it yet we have a Blanc de Blanc in the works

46:49Jonathan Stevenson:oh I thought you said the Chardonnay is not good well I say

46:52Tom Gearing:Chardonnay is not

46:52Jonathan Stevenson:good is a harsh thing to say sorry you said it's the most it's the hardest

46:55Tom Gearing:one to grow on the so therefore

46:57Jonathan Stevenson:when you do have a Blanc de Blanc you know it's amazing because it's the hardest one to grow so we've never

47:01Tom Gearing:done one since 2023 2023 is it diamond shaped it is not diamond shaped it's not diamond shaped i haven't actually tried it for about uh six months it's still in cellar we're waiting to see when we're going to release it but that one when that lands that's probably one of the one of the ones to go for

47:19Luke Spalding:that's the one to buy four of uh yeah four cases if you can yeah not bottles yeah if you can get

47:23Tom Gearing:yeah if you can we've only made 2 000 bottles wow so as you say we are we are really really small our total production is 20 000 bottles yeah so yeah that's in terms of other english wines um it's really really hard basically i would say go for blanc to blancs for sure because they will have the most aging potential and just look at who's winning the most awards or has got a really good pegadry of producing blanc to blanc i know you don't like to compare yourself to champagne so

47:49Jonathan Stevenson:do forgive me for asking this question but if you could say there was a comparison in english wine seen to each of these three brands who would you say is the closest comparison so who is the Meurta Chandon who is the Jacques Salos and who is the Salon Le Ménu

48:06Tom Gearing:oh god that's controversial

48:10Jonathan Stevenson:put him on to the spot he's not going to be welcome to any trade tastings anymore

48:17Tom Gearing:well everyone's Salon no I mean look I think diplomatic aren't about to come no no no no there we go um moat i think just in terms of sheer size now it has to be night night timber yeah you know okay um if you'd said bolly that would have been easier but yeah moat is moat who would be your bully answer i well i would say hamilton right okay um yeah i think they're producing some really good stuff um which is why we chose them as winemakers yeah um um salon is easy um where it's not it's a split one um derma or tommy right from langham so they're amazing i haven't come across langham go try some i've tried suguru yeah so they're both very distinctive you can have one of their wines and you will know you're drinking one of their wines right they're really really distinctive they've got their own personality running through their wines and where's langham langham's in devon right dorset devon i'm gonna say this wrong he's gonna kill me that area yeah that area down there and and tommy's doing the west country tommy's doing some fantastic you know winemaking down there um and really really like he's really young really passionate fantastic guy and he's producing some really amazing wines that are just one-off pieces like uniccles and then you've got the same with derma you know his wines are standout he's got real like electricity running through those wines yeah so yeah they're really both like

49:46Luke Spalding:so that's salon what was it jack salos actually just dermot would prefer me to say jack salos

49:53Tom Gearing:okay so we'll say that one yeah and then tommy can be sat on yeah everyone's happy

50:00Jonathan Stevenson:you still get your annual allocation yeah yeah i mean yeah oh well i'll be real well i might get

50:05Tom Gearing:invited to lunch at some point yeah but no dermot's again don't give me time you know he's whenever he's i've had a question about winemaking he's always popped over and said hello and and i've same for tommy i might actually see tommy tomorrow in scotland so that's be fun have some lunch it all i'll say about english wine is the community's amazing yeah that's and everyone's here to learn yeah and that's one thing i've taken away from it over the last what 12 this would be my 12th vintage well it has you have to almost be that collective sponge like

50:36Luke Spalding:you said which you've been in your own right but like making sure that obviously you have to fail fast and hard and you know very quickly turn it around from those failures but you know as a collective I think obviously it does have to be aligned in some respects because like you said it's it's about not just where to position versus champagne but where to position internationally and some common grounds where almost because of the infancy of the market still, globally, you can perhaps be clever with almost strategy for sharing, sort of slightly sharing the markets a little maybe, given they're all perhaps quite stylistically quite different, as you just mentioned there.

51:15Tom Gearing:Yeah. I think English sparkling wine, as I said, is now well established. We all know English wine in terms of the people within the industry, the wider wine industry. I mean it's just generally the consumer is the barrier at the moment and when that fixes itself we'll be flying what I'm excited about in terms of climate is where we will go with still wines yeah in the next you know we've got Pinot Wiles on here Essex is the kind of hot spot and that's because of London I'm convinced London's now almost like a heat dome or like a pressure dome and it's it's we get a load of bad weather sometimes come over the Atlantic with the southwest winds.

51:55Tom Gearing:And that London position is actually pushing that. What's the well-known one in Essex that's got quite a few awards?

52:01Jonathan Stevenson:Danbury Ridge. Danbury Ridge, yeah. Yeah, so they're producing. But I think their location, they say it's like one of the, I mean, climatically for the whole of the UK, it gets the best sunlight or something. Yeah, so Crouch Valley, Danbury Ridge.

52:10Tom Gearing:You've got the Jackson family that have just come over and planted over in that region as well. So you've got international people coming.

52:16Jonathan Stevenson:Jackson family from the US? Oh, okay, I didn't know that. Interesting.

52:19Tom Gearing:Yeah, so they've just planted. Charlie Holland from Gus Bourne has moved over to be their winemaker. Wow, okay.

52:24Jonathan Stevenson:And what, still whites and Doris?

52:25Tom Gearing:Still whites, reds, and I think they're going to do sparkling.

52:28Jonathan Stevenson:I think I tried one Pinot. I don't know what vintage it was. It was still a little bit, it was still quite lean, but... Yeah, Danbury Ridge. Definitely, definitely the improvement scale is obviously going up a lot. Actually, one question we talked about the collectability just quickly. Vintages as well. Just for anyone listening at home, we've got some great tips for things to seek out. but vintages like top like two or three vintages maybe stand out for consumers to think about when they're looking for something

52:52Tom Gearing:so best ones I've had so far 18 yeah so fantastic year

52:57Jonathan Stevenson:and did you make a wine in 18 yeah so

52:59Tom Gearing:that was my last vintage but I wasn't making wine at that point I was just you know growing the grapes for them and helping them get them into the winery but the Blanc de Blanc from that year was fantastic

53:10Jonathan Stevenson:was it a hot year yeah really hot super hot

53:12Tom Gearing:super dry amazing 21 I think could be a really interesting year which is the base of this but it's probably not one of the flagships 22 and then 2025 i think it's going to be the one coming along the one the one i'm really

53:27Jonathan Stevenson:excited to see what happens with blending this year so you had an easy year last year did you

53:30Tom Gearing:fairly i mean it was low the vintage in terms of yield was low because obviously what happens the year before has a knock-on effect um on the on the following season a bit like where you see shadow years across vintages you have like 2009 2010 if you have a good 2009 you'll have a good 2010 or you know if you have a bad bad 2012 you'll have a bad lower you could have a really nice

53:54Jonathan Stevenson:quality year but there's always sometimes there's excess energy in the vines yeah i sometimes find that in burgundy when i have really bad yields obviously we've just had it with like the 24 vintages like kind of year after and you sometimes get that kind of energy back in the year after maybe but it's interesting to hear this so the yields were low but yeah the yields were low but

54:09Tom Gearing:quality was fantastic and so 25 for sure when they come released but they won't be released for three four years yeah but right now on the market 18 really try and go after some 18s if

54:19Jonathan Stevenson:you can find them 2014s we're pretty good so 14 if you're going back vintage 18 um and what are these oh 21 obviously 21 obviously a long long time 22 as well 22 but it'll be interesting i

54:32Tom Gearing:think the acidity profile is a bit out on the 22s yeah um too warm too warm too dry too warm When do you pick? What time of year? So, yeah, it's changing rapidly. So we are normally typically first week, second week of October.

54:45Luke Spalding:Right.

54:47Tom Gearing:We were done by the end of September in 25. Wow. So that just shows you how things are moving. Yeah, and I think if you look across mainland Europe, they're picking now in sometimes August, sometimes first week of September. And that's just nuts how much they've moved. But, yeah, typically October. if it's if you're in the third week or fourth week of october yeah it's going really wrong yeah it's gone wrong it's not a great season probably stop uh go home pack up yeah it's not it's not going to be great and that's what we saw in in 24 we knew it was going to be bad because we weren't picking until like the third week of set uh third week of october i've got one more

55:25Jonathan Stevenson:question just popped into my head that i hadn't asked earlier you mentioned about the two grams of dosage for this are you generally low dosage across all of the cuvees any zero dosage or we've

55:34Tom Gearing:come close so the rose de sinier is uh one gram right most the later late release and the blanc noir we tend to go a little bit higher so six which is still low yeah um but yeah is what sub seven right sub seven yeah anything that's sub six is extra brute so you know it's we try to go that lower point really strictly just to try and keep that purity of style

55:56Jonathan Stevenson:purity of light vision yeah yeah interesting and like i mean obviously you can't talk for everyone in the English wine scene, but is it generally most people are on the lower end of the dosage?

56:07Tom Gearing:No, so the average for the UK is between 8 and 10 grams. Right, so you're just particularly... So again, you're slightly unique in that.

56:13Jonathan Stevenson:Yeah, I think that's a really good angle there. Because you get a more natural ripeness in your fruit, would you say? Is that a reason for it or just a stylistic decision?

56:21Tom Gearing:I mean, we push it. You know, when we can, we do push it. And even with this higher acidity that we saw from the 21s, we've managed to go low which i think is testament to the barrel use yeah and that balance that we've brought in with with cellar aging on this but i do i do think fruit has a massive play in terms of dosage and i prefer it and ben some definitely do now because it just keeps a connection between nose palate and you don't see a disjointedness or you don't see a confectedness coming through of a heavy dosage yeah so i quite i quite like it it has a real nice purity of style it's not for everyone but it is for a lot of soms and a lot of people that we work with you mentioned you're

57:03Jonathan Stevenson:going to put this into a lot of awards yeah obviously i did notice that you got your first robert parker wine rating and review were you happy with that it's all right it's okay it's

57:14Tom Gearing:all right i mean i i don't tend to go for a lot of a lot of things i i personally just want to see a couple of awards come our way we were very unlucky when we first launched we got straight silvers across the board right with our first cuvee and i was and ben took me aside and was just like why did we not get a gold i was like we were two points off ben two points off we will get it which awards like the cancer awards iwsc iwc and then we also got we actually got gold with tom houston uh who now works for decanter when he did a report on english wine and then spoken wine champagne championships.

57:54Tom Gearing:So we'll go for the full set again.

57:57Jonathan Stevenson:I mean, obviously, as your previous experience as a wine, working at a wine merchant, obviously coming in as a kind of salesperson on the commercial side, obviously what Jonathan and I do, you know, critic scores is, whether you love them or loathe them, it's a real critical part of the process. I mean, I do, you know, we have actually started exploring, you know, kind of using AI for more semantic analysis of tasting notes rather than just looking at the score because we think that's an interesting area to go into. But, you know, unfortunately, you know, scores and numbers on the door do have a big impact, especially in the market that we're in.

58:27Jonathan Stevenson:You know, it's such an influential factor when people come to making making the decisions. But it can. If I was a winemaker, it must be kind of frustrating sometimes to have like your whole, you know, vintage or years worth of work, especially when you've got a cuvette. It's like a Solera, you know, come down to an arbitrary number. but the flip side is I'm sure if suddenly someone came out and gave you 99 points you're going to be like oh thank you very much we'll take that one

58:51Luke Spalding:keep that one on the website

58:52Tom Gearing:I think I think one it validates the work yeah okay it helps validate the work but it also raises the profile I remember one classic story which was with a Norfolk vineyard they won decanter for their Bacchus they sold out their entire vintage within four days yeah and obviously they didn't have too much but it changed that business overnight and that was winbury so that was winbury estate in norfolk and it just

59:19Luke Spalding:changed it that's what i was going to ask you off the back of so many of the things you've said around challenges both in the in the vineyard with 24 vintage but also even just more like everyday things like you've just said you've got your you know your young young newborn you've got a mortgage i get i guess from all of the aspects you've had involvement in not just within wine but in business as well like what what what would you say over the next three to five years is is success for the project and like you know are you defining it by just profile in which case obviously critic reviews are going to help that or is it more a case of finding new markets you know how do you

59:53Tom Gearing:sort of see success i mean first off profitability yeah um validate the the theory or validate the the high-professional use and and make sure that it disprove the fact it shouldn't work yeah prove the fact that it has worked yeah yeah prove the fact that it is it is successful and then we go forward from there like you know what do we do what is the next phase of a flight after after that once we've hit that milestone yeah um the next one is just keep to our guns

1:00:24Luke Spalding:do not sell out that's all that that was another question i had which was off the back of it which was a little bit around that you know clearly you've now moved towards and it sounds like you maybe tried to have a bit of hand on persuading that you know lower dosage was was kind of where you wanted to take it is that is that do you think gonna come i guess it's always about juggling the two plates i guess but is that gonna probably come more important to saving a a crop or a vintage perhaps because you want to make sure you're sticking to that yeah i mean look when we lost

1:00:55Tom Gearing:24 there was one rule i had from from ben and sam come down and i was like this do not lose the 25 yeah no matter what you bring in 25 because we need it because we have we were seeing 20 30 growth we can take a hit on one year because it's sparkling wine you can massage things out you don't you're not so exposed to say still wines uh territory with two years of hit that would have been hard to massage out we would have lost a lot of customer base and we can't do that we're so young people are going to explore our wines um to then suddenly go to a load of trade accounts we haven't got any we would just lose we would just literally go go right back so yeah there are some always some hard decisions but i think in terms of stylistically about where the wine goes we have to hold true on that and i think that's that's the main thing and that's what i love about it you know and with all the brands you know i see see in english wine there is a lot of that once they've found their place they are sticking with it yeah um what's in your

1:01:55Jonathan Stevenson:cellar that's not sparkling what's your go-to what are you grabbing at the weekend for a special

1:02:00Tom Gearing:occasion i mean i sold most of it to buy a house um um so pinot noir yeah i literally from central

1:02:12Luke Spalding:otago uh oregon burgundy is is my go-to like i absolutely have a fascination with it sirrah as

1:02:20Tom Gearing:well yeah like give me anything from like like sirrah many we don't sir as if you want to go into into new world um that's those are my two go-to so reds predominantly um and then i'm a sucker i'm a sucker for anything basically chardonnay yeah um especially barreled massively

1:02:39Jonathan Stevenson:barreled and buttery yeah okay that's my kind of that's my kind of chardonnay yeah so very much

1:02:44Tom Gearing:juxtaposed position to a really fresh vibrant fruity yeah uh we're talking like age developed yeah yeah everything like that those are those yeah yeah and and it could be from all kinds the more obscure the better um any memorable investments in your in your collection that

1:03:00Jonathan Stevenson:you sold off anything that you did really well on and any any that you wish you still had today

1:03:04Tom Gearing:that you could pull and open so montrose 1996 okay nice so i sold that one off yeah that helped to actually fund the next collection um and then um and then that really was a more kind of portfolio-led collection that i built up i've always had a soft spot for anything saint julian yeah um nothing major no no major big growers um soft spot for talbot uh gloria because i just love the backstory of gloria about how they got their vineyards during the war which were actually first growth second growth vineyards um i'm desperate for a reclassification um um but yeah no nothing nothing too major but it was it was more of just fun just of collecting yeah at one point i think had about 240 300 bottles amazing nice um some just one-offs some cases yeah um that i never even saw because i just i bought them and then sold them yeah they were on a platform somewhere and

1:04:07Luke Spalding:And yeah, they went off the platform and made some money and bought a house.

1:04:11Jonathan Stevenson:Yeah.

1:04:12Tom Gearing:So, yeah.

1:04:13Jonathan Stevenson:Will someone one day be able to buy a house when they sell off their English sparkling wine collection?

1:04:18Tom Gearing:Not with the current rise of house prices in the UK. Maybe in Spain. Maybe in Spain you might be able to. In a property crash and a continued English sparkling wine boom. I do think they will keep on going. Obviously, we've seen a few hundred pound bottles now being produced and sold already. Which ones are they? So you've got Kits Koty from Chapel. They're pretty high now in terms of value.

1:04:43Jonathan Stevenson:That's ex-winery price? Or on the secondary market? That's the secondary market. Sorry, which one again?

1:04:48Tom Gearing:Kits Koty. Okay. It's from Chapel. So that's their premium label. Gusbourne's got a fair few now. 51 degrees. They've got that premium wine. Yeah, I thought that was a bit of a high price one. Night Timber's got their premium range. Exxon Park have got some really interesting wines coming through. Yeah. So, yeah, Hampshire-based. and then I'm sure Hambledon will have one or two running around soon so yeah I mean look it's there the£100 mark is there but whether we see £200,£300 mark I don't think we'll see that for a while

1:05:17Jonathan Stevenson:yeah well I've heard about this Blanc de Blanc that's coming out soon if you can get an allocation if you can get an allocation that's right I mean

1:05:27Tom Gearing:that's one thing we're looking at and I think a lot of wineries are looking at is on Premier release for their wine club so forward advance sales of vintages

1:05:35Luke Spalding:which is that was where my head was going with it or which is like you kind of got this opportunity to try and think of maybe ways to offset in protection of the the identity of the wine you can maybe start thinking about offsetting some of that that you know that cost impact if there were if you were to lose things but then again if you're running that model and then you don't you don't make a 24 vintage that then hampers things so i mean i mean that's where my so my

1:05:59Tom Gearing:wife i should say we met at richie um um and then we got married like 10 years later seven years later she's going to kill me if i don't remember that right yeah um we can edit that but she she helped set up their their wine club which is i think now 750 members oh brilliant um and then you've got gusborne squarries they've all got like a thousand plus members we've got a really small one at ever flight we're like 100 and we're only looking to go to 200 and then hannah moved over to artillium and she's set up their wine club which is now already 200 um artillium is a small estate not not small it's bigger than us um it's 120 000 vines but they've already got you know they do stills and sparklings are really really cool really edgy uh still wine market and they're you know they've got 200 300 members already and i think there is a real demand from what i can see from wine club so if we've got these people interested in wine club why aren't

1:06:53Luke Spalding:you know and they are clearly collecting wine butchers type of local buying as well but like

1:06:57Jonathan Stevenson:obviously you you were out in the u.s for for a while and obviously you would have seen it a lot i mean it's such a badge of honor in the u.s to be on these mailing lists the amount of times even when i was with you occasionally on doing events and tastings and but people would just be like reeling off all the different that would be like almost like the first thing that people would start talking about yeah who do you get allocations from oh yeah there's you know and everyone everyone had their own little place or person oh yeah there goes my allocation that's coming out each but they people really passionate about like which ones were on their list and kind of like they always you know they're really attached to them so i find it that it does create a real strong sort of connection between like the individual and the brand yeah yeah i mean and

1:07:36Tom Gearing:that's why i was going to go in the old days i think when i was collecting when you know previously we were collecting because they were this growth or they were this brand now i think people need to have that resonation with either the grower the maker they need to really understand what's behind the wine to make it, to actually want to collect it. So I think the story is more important than actually sometimes the wine or the brand. And, you know, I think we're seeing that more and more, not just in English wine, but just globally.

1:08:06Luke Spalding:I think that's where it's now going with collections.

1:08:09Tom Gearing:Everyone wants to find the next unicorn wine, something that no one's heard of. So we were saying, I know these guys, these are really cool, they're doing something. Exactly, yeah. Just out of a small cellar.

1:08:20Jonathan Stevenson:We had a very short interruption from our producer who made us realise that we'd almost gone the whole podcast without tasting this absolutely superb Rosé de Signe, which you've talked about. Maybe we can reintroduce slightly before we get into tasting it and sharing our thoughts, but thank you very much for sharing.

1:08:36Tom Gearing:Thank you. Yeah, so Rosé de Signe, as you kind of said, so when I got into viticulture or wine, I just really wanted to make a wine that transcended from vineyard all the way through into bottle, and that's what i think we get with the rose dissenia style this is macerated on skins 22 hours and it's just trying to capture the vintage and and the and the kind of like varieties so pinot while pinot murnia pretty much equal split and then showcasing them to their forefront in a

1:09:06Jonathan Stevenson:sparkling wine and the colors nuts yeah the color's absolutely beautiful so yeah yeah so 18 months in

1:09:14Tom Gearing:cellar so again it's really low like cellar aging not too much barrel work super low volumes in

1:09:19Jonathan Stevenson:terms of production sub 2000 bottles and the um you said about 20 hours ish of 22 hours of skin

1:09:27Tom Gearing:content yeah so yeah all which is amazing to get that color off it i mean it's quite not that's not that long right no in terms of no no so we seem to get lots of anthocyanins uh in our pinos really really good concentration for that what people don't might know anthocyanins are it's the color uh content in the skins yeah and that's where we get the color out for not not the pulp

1:09:46Jonathan Stevenson:so maybe for people at home that are familiar and obviously rosé is extremely popular especially in the uk in the summer like what what is the difference in a normal rosé and a rosé de

1:09:53Tom Gearing:sagné that we're tasting here so sometimes you'll see uh chardonnay come into into the mix or what would have happened is the winemaker will have made a white wine white base and they will even make a red wine and add a certain proportion to get the color in okay so eventually you're basically drinking a rosé that's been tinted yeah whereas with sagné or sagné it's made as a rosé So it's far more phenolic concentrated. You get lots more red fruit on the nose. Gastronomic sparkling wines. I think people are still coming to terms with sparkling wines being used to pair with food. But this is definitely one of those wines.

1:10:32Jonathan Stevenson:This is brilliant, honestly. I'm not just saying it because you're here.

1:10:35Luke Spalding:It's like a five-packer, isn't it? It's like a cool spring as well. You can tell there's so much energy there.

1:10:40Tom Gearing:Yeah.

1:10:41Luke Spalding:And that's what we wanted.

1:10:42Tom Gearing:We really wanted to hone in on that energy, that vineyard-esque. kind of like like profile coming through into the wine you know whereas you can you we're sparkling there's so much production going on you know you've got first ferment you've got second ferment you've got barrel usage tank usage or or like clay or or whatever way you're going in terms of medium and then you've got cellar age dosage cork age there's all of those elements playing in in the winemaking itself so we tried to strip them down and again one gram of dosage only 18 months wow

1:11:14Luke Spalding:one gram of dosage yeah it's very vinyous really rich the finish is so kind of and maybe this is now

1:11:21Jonathan Stevenson:the hallmark for your wine so again like on the nose beautiful it's just that little hint of that kind of sweet lifted aromatics kind of you just want to keep that back and chasing it down yeah

1:11:33Tom Gearing:you've got that blossom coming through a little bit like rose petal coming through yeah and again it's got that nice energy all the way through a bit of salinity to it as well

1:11:42Luke Spalding:yeah great so we need some We need some warm weather now. Yeah, we need warm weather

1:11:46Jonathan Stevenson:and that would just be...

1:11:47Tom Gearing:I mean, it was quite nice today, but yeah, that's what we need.

1:11:51Luke Spalding:Right, let me get that out of the glass.

1:11:53Jonathan Stevenson:Yeah, absolutely brilliant. Super. Thank you so much for sharing that. It's been a fantastic pod. We're so grateful for you coming on. As you know, we were very excited to have you here and probably absolutely bombarded you

1:12:07Luke Spalding:with questions.

1:12:07Jonathan Stevenson:That's right. More than you maybe were anticipating. But yeah, certainly an exciting place for us to discuss and I know from my own personal experience it comes up so much in conversations around like English wine and you know whether it's like where should I go visit you know where would you recommend or you know which ones should I pick out so I think doing this and kind of like ticking off all of those questions in one go from someone who has immense expertise and is clearly on a pathway to the very top when it comes to English sparkling wine is something that yeah we're very grateful for so thank you much for coming along to the pod.

1:12:40Luke Spalding:Thank you very much for having me. and I think just even to be able to bring that level of additional detail to our audience we'd obviously love that to come through in support of the brand and everything you're doing I think it's going to be fascinating to watch things unfold and obviously we'll wait for our allocation of the £300 of us exactly it's going to be a while but yeah we'll get there at some point brilliant guys thanks ever so much and yeah Tom are you going to lead us out?

1:13:10Jonathan Stevenson:I'm going to lead us out yeah so look first of all if you have been listening at home or you've been watching along the first thing i'll say is that we will put all the information around everfly everflights wines and around luke on the description so feel free to have a search around and get in contact with luke directly if you found his story interesting or you want to know more about the the wines and is it somewhere that

1:13:27Tom Gearing:people can visit i think it is right you can do so um you can now visit every weekend from the first of april till the end of september but i mean it was just just to highlight the entire region ditchling which is where we're based in village there is seven producers within four miles of that so you can make a whole weekend of it if you really are you're not far from brighton

1:13:47Jonathan Stevenson:as well so you can go down to the beach and yep 100 so yeah it's a good it's a good weekend out

1:13:52Tom Gearing:we get a lot of people from london coming down so yeah and and gatwick's only 30 minutes up the

1:13:58Jonathan Stevenson:road there you go heard it from the horse's mouth yeah um but look this has been episode 10 of uncork the cult wines podcast where we look to take you behind a fine wine market thank you very much for listening in as always we ask you to like we ask you to subscribe on your favorite podcast channel and of course leave your comments whether that's on Spotify whether it's on Apple or whether that's on YouTube and if you want to get in touch and ask any questions with ourselves or our guests then feel free to contact us through the usual channels we'd love to hear from you but thank you very much for listening once again see you soon