Many of our friends are surprised when we mention English sparkling wine and it is easy to understand why. England isn’t exactly best known for its sunny weather. When economist David Ricardo wanted to illustrate his famous Law of Comparative Advantage, he used the example of England importing wine from sunny Portugal in exchange for warm wool cloth. English wine exports? Who’d have believed it?

English Sparkling Wine is a Thing

And yet English wine is not just a thing, it is a popular thing. But it takes some time for the word to get out. I hosted a virtual wine event for a UK group earlier this year that featured a wine from Nyetimber, a winery that helped put English sparkling wine on the map. About half the participants were familiar with the wine while the other half were taken by surprise. Everyone enjoyed it.

Sue and I were recently invited to sample wines from a leading English producer, Chapel Down. Chapel Down, as the 2015 video above explains,  is one of the largest and best-known wine producers in the UK with an expanding network of vineyard holdings and plans to further increase production. The wines are now available in the U.S. market through retailers in several states and via on-line sellers, too.

We sampled two Chapel Down wines: a Rosé Brut blanc de noir made with 100 percent Pinot Noir grapes and a Brut NV made with the three standard Champagne grape varieties with the addition of 5 percent Pinot Blanc. We all agreed that the Rosé was a great aperitif wine while the Brut NV was better with our meal of tuna and grilled vegetables. Both wines were easy to drink and enjoy — welcome additions to the sparkling wine category.

Chapel Down’s wines and those of other English makers benefit from a combination of factors starting with the vineyard terroir, which bears a resemblance to the chalky soils of the Champagne region (what do you think those white cliffs of Dover are made of?). Climate change has benefited English vineyards, both by providing more favorable growing conditions generally and by enabling a shift to classic grape varieties including especially Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and away from “usual suspect” cool-climate varieties such as Bacchus, Muller-Thurgau, and Reichensteiner. Add ambitious investment and mix with professional winemaking knowledge and technology and you have world-class sparkling wines.

Bali Sparkling Wine is Also a Thing

Prosecco, as I noted in last week’s Wine Economist column, has re-defined the sparkling wine category. Bubbles are not just for special occasions any more and they don’t just come from France, either. There is a world of sparkling wine out there and Champagne producers had a hand in creating it. Did you know that French producer Chandon also makes traditional method sparkling wines in Argentina, Brazil, California, Australia, China, and India?

Sue and I have been saving a bottle of sparkling wine from Bali, Indonesia to share with our friend Janice, who carried it back from a South Pacific trip in the pre-covid days. Ascaro, made by Sababay Winery, is a “Prosecco-style” sparkling wine made from Pinot Grigio and Muscat Saint Valier,  a cross between Seyve Villard 12 and Muscat Hamburg, which is generally grown as a table grape but has been used successfully to make wine in Bali for more than two decades.

We shared the wine with Janice and it was fantastic. Fizzy, fruity but not sweet, nicely balanced, with enough complexity to make things interesting — it was everything you would want from a sparkling wine on a warm summer evening. It would stand out in any line-up of similar wines from around the world.

Sababay Winery is an interesting project as my former student Ali Hoover reported in a 2014 Wine Economist guest column. The mother-daughter team of Mulyati and Evy Gozali founded Sababay because they were concerned about the economic circumstances of grape farmers in North Bali. The local table grape market had boomed and then came the bust, which left the farmers with high debt. The Gozali family  offered to help the farmers get out from under their debts and move toward economic stability by creating a market for quality wine grapes, which promised to yield more value to the farmers than commodity table grapes.

The project has been a success, as the video below suggests and a distillery has been added to the project. I have a bottle of award-winning Saba grappa spirits waiting for the right occasion.  When that time comes we’ll toast the Gozali family or their grace and determination.

The sparkling wine category is full of surprises. Glad to see consumers embracing the diverse pleasures that this part of the wine wall offers.