ones, but Newhaven chalk was formed at the intersection of the Santonian and Campanian ages of the Upper Cretaceous. French Senonian chalk includes all three. But it’s not just the chalk that is the point, says Kellett. “You want chalk close to the coast, because it gets cooler farther inland… The Isle of Wight takes all the rain from here and protects us from rain. But the architecture is the purity of the chalk; for great sparkling wine in 50 years’ time, you want chalk on chalk.” Hambledon is about 5 miles (8km) from the sea, and Kellett’s ideal exposure is east turning south. “In early morning in the summer, the sun is bright; in early evening, it’s a yellow light, and the wavelength is longer and the frequency declining, so you get less light energy in the evening. Fewer photons of light energy means less photosynthesis in the evening. “We’re trying to increase our growing degree-days and ripening potential […]. If you want to do that, you plant toward the east, not the west […]. The other benefit of being east-facing is that we have our back to the prevailing southwest winds, so it’s a double benefit in temperature terms.” There are temperature sensors all over the vineyard. The
difference in temperature between the bottom of the hill and the top—about 1,250ft (380m)—can be 2.7–3.6°F (1.5–2°C) on a hot day, and on an early spring morning it can be 7.2–8.1°F (4–4.5°C). For exactly the same reason—temperature—he is against cover crops in English vineyards. “The drive to cover crops is from warmer climates. Cover crops cool down a vineyard. If you stand on a beach on a hot day, your feet are hot.” You then head for grass to walk on, because it’s cooler. “It can make a difference of between 1% and 1.5% [potential alcohol] if you have no cover crops.”
The vineyards, from the initial 10 acres (4ha) of trials, has expanded to 200 acres (80ha). “It will get to 500 acres [200ha] or so over the next decade, then I’ll draw stumps for my lifetime.” The results of the trials over five years, with 30 different chemical
Opposite: Hambledon’s owners Ian Kellett and his wife Anna Krits-Kellett. Above: England’s oldest commercial vineyard in its 70th-anniversary year.
It’s not just the chalk, says Ian Kellett. “You want chalk close to the coast, because it gets cooler farther inland… The Isle of Wight protects us from rain. But the architecture is the purity of the chalk; for great sparkling wine in 50 years’ time, you want chalk on chalk”
analyses on the juice, informed the expansion, with about half the vine/rootstock combinations being used. Then, with Jestin on board, “I sat down with a spreadsheet doing the City thing and asking, What is the right size for this? Big, was the answer. Because they hadn’t done that in the past, they had had insufficient scale and had closed down. Before, they’d always lost money, and they were always at the behest of the winery owner to keep going. Fifty years they’d been trying. It needed to be a whole different approach. Put simply, it’s working with the climate, not against it.”
Deep knowledge, long-term investment And if you’re on the South Downs, one of the most beautiful places on earth, it makes sense to work with that, too, and get visitors in. Hence the new winery and visitor center; hence the new restaurant. “We’d always intended to feed people,” says Kellett, “but with plates of charcuterie and cheese, and with no chef. Keep it easy. But it’s a very different place now.” The chef, Nick Edgar, was executive chef at Le Manoir aux
Quat’Saisons, the two-Michelin-star restaurant in Oxfordshire created by celebrated chef Raymond Blanc OBE, and he cooks like a dream. When I visited Hambledon, as well as cooking like a dream, he happened to mention several times to Kellett that his old boss had been on the telephone trying to get him back, which brought to mind the Saki line, “The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, [he] went.” But let’s hope not.
THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023 | 151
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