WHICH ENGLISH WINE WAS THE FAVOURITE? - white, sparkling, rose or red?

Central London Wine Society held a wonderful wine and dine event at the Civil Service club on 15 June 2019. During the evening we had tastes of 14 different English white wines. All were bought from the larger branches of Waitrose supermarket in London.

This photo shows my two favourites.

English white wines. Photo by Angela Lansbury

An English sparkling white wine on the left. On the left of the picture is our starter drink, the Hattingley Valley Classic Reserve. NV meaning non vintage. A sparkling white wine which we had as our welcome drink.

Cost
It cost £24. That may compare well with some Champagnes from France, but is considerably dearer than the popular Proseccos from Italy sold in Tesco Express supermarket.

On the right was the one I liked even more, our sweet dessert wine, the Denbies Noble Harvest 2016.
Lots of sugar. 94.3 grams per liter. That sounds staggering to me. That compares with a Sauternes up to about 100-120 grams per litre. The Denbies Nobel Harvest 2016.

We were a group of about a dozen. We all voted on our favourite wines. I am out of kilter with other wine drinkers. I am a nineteen sixties girl brought up on Mateus Rose from Portugal.

My other favourite was Liebraumilch from Germany. That was in the days when wine from England was unheard of.

The final sweet wine was a universal favourite in our group. However, the starter wine was beaten in the voting by the second wine on our list.

Pairing Wines With Food
We had so many wines that it was not possible to pair up the main course wines with everybody's main courses. I ordered chicken (chicken Kiev) so white wines suited me. My husband ordered steak so he asked to have the red wine early.

The first sparkling wine I liked so much was not so striking later in the meal nor at the end of the meal, when, admittedly, it was no longer cold, nor sparkling. After all, that is the point of the bubbles, to distract you from the nasty wine.

USEFUL WEBSITES
My husband is a wine educator and gives a more technical account of the wines on his website:
http://grapedeal.com/english-wine/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.