Better known for reality TV stars than fine wines, Essex is not traditionally associated with sophisticated viniculture — but that looks set to change with some of the world’s top winemakers queuing up to praise the county’s pinot noir and invest in local vineyards.
Domaine Duroché, one of the most prestigious family-run wine estates in Burgundy, has announced a joint venture with Essex’s Danbury Ridge vineyard, which lies southeast of Chelmsford.
Pierre Duroché, the fifth generation heir of the Duroché estate, will be joining Danbury for this year’s harvest and winemaking to help craft a “small batch cuvée” that will be available from 2028.
The partnership came about after Duroché tasted a bottle of Danbury’s 2021 pinot noir and was so impressed he felt he had to start working with the vineyard.
The investment came after Olivier Leflaive, one of Burgundy’s great winemakers, recently confessed that the French “need to be worried” about Essex pinot noir.
Duroché is not the only Burgundy estate operating in the county. Alex Moreau, of the acclaimed Domaine Bernard Moreau, has just started working with the Woodham Ferrers vineyard Missing Gate to produce a new chardonnay.
• 11 of the best vineyard stays in the UK
Nick Speakman, the owner of Missing Gate, said the plan was to produce a top quality wine that could compete on the world stage.
He said: “We’re never going to compete on quantity. We just can’t do the volume of grapes so we need to drive quality upwards. That’s why we have a very low density of planting with very wide rows to reduce chemical requirements and to try and make something with a bulletproof taste, hardened for months.”
He added of Moreau: “Alex is one of the most charming and knowledgeable people I’ve ever met, and that’s even though he is French. He’s been incredibly generous with his time and very complimentary about what we’re doing here”.
Asked what the partnership could mean for his vineyard, Speakman said: “It’s significant. To put it bluntly, it’s giving me a problem for IHT.”
Pierre Duroché was so impressed with Danbury Ridge’s 2021 pinot noir he has partnered with the company
DANBURY RIDGE WINE ESTATE
The French are playing catch up with new world producers who have already invested millions in the county’s vineyards. Last month, the Californian giant Jackson Family Wines released its first “Essex burgundy” with an event at Royal Ascot, while New Zealand’s former Cloudy Bay winemaker, Nick Lane, has recently opened a winery near Colchester to make still wines from East Anglia grapes.
• The 10 best wines to buy at Marks & Spencer this summer
Henry Jeffreys, the author of Vines in a Cold Climate, a book on English wine, believes Essex’s reputation has been transformed by some high quality and award-winning wines in the past five years.
The warm and dry conditions in Essex’s Dengie Peninsula, which lies to the south of the Blackwater River and the north of the Crouch River, are ideal for making still wines, he said.
“If you want to make a red wine, you need to get the skin really, really ripe so that you can get colour out of it without it tasting kind of green,” Jeffreys said. “That’s actually very hard to do in England because we have lots of rain. But in this part of Essex it’s hot and, most importantly, dry so there’s less disease, meaning you can let the grapes ripen right into November.”
Danbury Ridge has clay soil that retains moisture in dry weather
The sticky clay soil in Essex is also good for vines because it holds moisture in dry weather but does not get waterlogged when it rains. Another advantage for investors is that agricultural land in the county has traditionally been relatively cheap because the clay soil is difficult to plough for arable farming.
Jeffreys believes Burgundy’s producers are turning to Essex because the temperatures in their part of central France are becoming too hot to consistently produce the finely balanced wines and distinct flavours the region is famous for.
He said: “It’s a similar story to what happened with the champagne houses coming to Kent and Sussex. With the Burgundy region warming up, they’re thinking, where’s the next best place? And it’s Essex.”
Awards are now falling on Essex wines faster than the county’s tanning salons book up before a bank holiday weekend.
• Our decade creating a mini drinks empire at our Devon estate
Last month, for example, Devon’s Lyme Bay Winery celebrated becoming the first English producer to win the prestigious International Wine Challenge national trophies for both red and white wine in the same year. Its winning pinot noir was made with grapes from five Essex vineyards, while its winning chardonnay was made with grapes from the Martin’s Lane vineyard in the Crouch Valley.
An old joke used to ask: “What’s an Essex girl’s idea of a balanced diet?” The answer was: “A chardonnay in each hand”. It seems the women of the county always knew something the rest of us did not.