As promised in my post on Albourne Estate Blanc de Noirs 2018 last Friday, I am following it up with a review of their Blanc de Blancs 2018. This is a 74% Chardonnay, 26% Pinot Blanc blend from a single vineyard. Albourne Estate believe Chardonnay is the grape with the best potential to make great wines in England – we should be in for a treat!
Like the Blanc de Noirs 2018, the Albourne Estate Blanc de Blancs 2018 spends a tremendous amount of time on lees after the second fermentation in bottle – five years in the case of this wine. Albourne Estate view this as necessary to help tame the naturally high acidity of Chardonnay.
They also attempt to reduce the acidity by putting all the base wines through malolactic fermentation; furthermore, by maturing some of the Chardonnay in old in old French oak after the first fermentation.
Purely because I feel perfectly content to question the choices of people far more skilled at making wine than me, I do wonder if this is all strictly necessary. Low pH (so, high acid) wines age for a longer period than higher pH wines, both because acidity makes sulphur in the wine work more effectively as well as the acidity acting as a preservative in itself.
What this should result in is the eight-year-old Blanc de Blancs 2018 being more advanced than a wine that had not been treated with these techniques. Hopefully, it will be ready and willing to satisfy my desires!
Dosage of the Blanc de Blancs 2018 is low, by English fizz standards, at 5g/l. The wine should not be the least bit cloying.
I am fascinated to discover what effect being grown on greensand, which you will will recall usually results in grapes of increased ripeness and the final wines having more power, has on the structure of this wine. Given the generosity this produced in the Albourne Estate Blanc de Noirs 2018, I am expecting quite a mouthful!
As an aside, Chardonnay grown on greensand (or very similar) soil is produced on the fringes of the Macônnais and on some of the lower slopes of the Montagne de Reims. These wines are highly prized for their ripeness, density, and power.
However, this Albourne Estate Blanc de Blancs 2018 should not be too heavy, as the addition of Pinot Blanc will lighten the body of the wine. Now that hot summers seem to be the new normal in England, having this varietal planted in the Blanc de Blancs vineyard seems an extremely wise insurance policy.
The decisions made by Albourne Estate in making this wine definitely have a coherent plan to them. These choices, together with the generosity of the vintage and that the Blanc de Blancs 2018 source vineyard is greensand-based, should result in a final wine of real personality. As the Blanc de Noirs 2018 was a damned good wine, I certainly expect this personality to be of distinctly mellifluent spirit.
Pop that eight-year-old’s cork and get down to business!
English Sparkling Wine Blanc de Blancs 2018, Albourne Estate
There are plenty of Chardonnay-cum-autolysis aromas on the nose: brioche, grilled almonds and hazelnuts, biscuits and a toasty breadliciousness. I can just about get a hint of creaminess from the barrel maturation of some of the Chardonnay.
The fruit is a little less luxuriantly solar and generous than that of the Blanc de Noirs 2018. It is ripe, though, with a good lemon character, plenty of orchard fruits and a jocundly beauteous scent of apple blossom.
Given the nose of the Blanc de Blancs 2018 generally smells so amiably resplendent, I am slightly surprised that there is a hint of greenness detectable. This is the kind of aroma I find I do not look for in my fizz.
Blanc de Blancs is my favourite type of fizz; they smell, as this almost entirely does, so beautiful and taste so refined. Consequently, I am slightly surprised to admit, when The Editor asks, that I prefer the lustrous, sun-kissed opulence of the Blanc de Noirs 2018 extravagantly fragrant signature. That’s a turn up for the books – perhaps I need aromas to be more overt now I am advancing through middle-age!
A taste! Lovely, creamy mousse and nice fruit are present. It has bread-y, nutty, autolytic flavours and is charged with energy; as fresh and perky as they come.
Indeed, even though it is eight years old, this seems a tad linear and backward. The fruit is there, and I can sense the ripe power of Chardonnay, but this is currently more direct than a Frenchman!
Well, I was wrong about the wine being advanced AND wrong about Albourne Estate not needing to reduce the acidity as much as they do! It is backward and orthotropic. Maybe I should stop questioning the decisions of people who are more skilled winemakers than me…
There is undoubtedly an oenomorphic solidity to the Blanc de Blancs 2018’s palate but I get some austerity to the Pinot Blanc fruit. I find it hard to believe that someone would pick unripe Pinot Blanc grown on greensand in a vintage like 2018!
This Albourne Estate wine is far from being a ‘greenie meanie’ yet, after having the uproarious Blanc de Noirs 2018 a couple of days ago, I find it a little lacking in Bacchanalian lubricity. The BdeN banged so hard for so few bucks I would be throwing my money at Albourne Estate for a shedload of that. And I already have.
I am optimistic about the future of my remaining three bottles of Albourne Estate Blanc de Blancs 2018 – I hope the wine has the required juice to come out of its hole. Should you wish to age an affordable English Blanc de Blancs (there are vanishingly few of them!), this is the wine I am trying it with. How long should you keep it? Paf! I will pop one in… oh… four-ish years… I think…
