Our Charmat was originally just an experiment and almost a bit of an accident. The idea came about in 2017 when our partner vineyard (Humbleyard in Mulbarton) offered us the chance to work with four grape varieties: Rondo, Reichensteiner, Cabernet Cortis and Solaris. These early ripening, super aromatic varieties have been widely planted in the UK due to their suitability to the climate but have not been well received in still wines. They are also very disease resistant and require minimal input in the vineyard making them the most sustainable option for the future. It's just a shame a good home hasn't been found for them quite yet.
I was unsure what to do with this fruit but, given the nature of the varieties, thought a fruity sparkling wine might suit them. Concurrently my friend David Cowderoy was exploring the possibility of contract bottling sparkling Charmat wines and we agreed to trial a batch. Very briefly the Charmat method creates the bubbles from secondary fermentation in tank and is the process used in Prosecco. It is different to the individual bottle fermentations that happen in Champagne. On a large scale it is a more economic process that results in fruit forward wines. On a small scale it is prohibitively expensive due to the specialist equipment required. This is perhaps why it's not been a popular method for sparkling wines in the UK thus far even when many of the grapes grown in the country are well suited to it.
When our first Charmat was released in 2018 it was one of the first of its kind. A small batch of just 3,000 bottles was well received and Matthew Jukes (one of the top wine writers in the world) said it was the finest example of a pink Charmat method wine he had tasted from anywhere in the world. Since then we have gradually scaled it up and recently produced 30,000 bottles in 2023. We hope to bring the full bottling process in house in 2024 and pioneer this method as a key wine for the UK.