The Duke's Reserve Brandy

This year we have released our first brandy, named The Duke's Reserve after the Duke of Northumberland who owns the estate here in Albury that the vineyard sits on.

This delicious spirit has been made for us by Silent Pool Distillers from the pressings of our wine from the 2013 harvest. It has been aging in oak for a year and is now ready for you to taste! Only 150 bottles have been made of this limited release brandy, and you can only buy it directly from the vineyard. It is for sale at £30 a bottle and we think it will make a great Christmas present.

Don't forget that we are open every Friday (10am - 3pm) and Saturday (10am - 5pm) from now until Christmas for you to pop in and taste the brandy, as well as our new sparkling wines. You can also stock up on our new sparkling wines for Christmas.

English Wines are Fizzing

In recent years English quality sparkling wines have started to compete head on with Champagne, winning numerous international awards. English vineyards like Nyetimber, Camel Valley, Ridgeview, Gusbourne and Chapel Down have led the way in producing wines that challenge the world's best fizz.

Made in exactly the same way as champagne, using Method Traditional, English bubbly is now appearing on most UK sommeliers wine lists and is starting to be exported to numerous wine loving countries including the US and Australia. It is even making an appearance in Bordeaux in France at Gordon Ramsey's new restaurant.

So why is English bubbly so good? Amazingly it's all to do with our great weather! The best sparkling wines in the world are made in cool climates, Champagne being the most famous example. This is because quality sparkling wine is made from fairly acidic grape juice and in a cool climate the acids stay high and the grapes don't get too ripe. Of course quality is also effected by soil and topography as well as the climate (what the French call terroir) and many of our vineyards are sited on land very similar to Champagne. We have also developed a very professional approach to wine production with some of the best viticulturists and wine makers in the world now based in the UK.

At Albury Organic Vineyard we are fortunate to benefit from great terroir, and an almost perfect site for growing Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes which are the traditional champagne varietals. We also believe that our biodynamic approach helps to produce excellent quality fruit and ultimately great wine. Whilst we are a young vineyard, having planted in 2009, we have already won some prestigious awards and have had our wine listed at The Royal Opera House, Claridges and Raymond Blanc's Manoir Aux Quat'Saisons.

So don't bother with average quality Champagne this Christmas and New Year - celebrate with excellent quality English organic bubbly instead.

Another Good Year - Harvest Round-up

The harvest is now finished and some excellent quality must is now happily fermenting in the winery. Time to relax a bit and for some a holiday - Alex, our vineyard manager, has decided that she needs a break from the English winter and has gone to New Zealand leaving Attila moping around the vineyard!

2015 has been another good year for Albury Vineyard. Overall the quality of fruit was almost as good as the exceptional 2014. The grapes were very clean with no sign of disease and sugars were great. Acids were a bit higher than last year for the fruit that we picked for our sparkling wine, but that's not bad news as the best bubbly is made from fairly acidic grape juice.

The only slight disappointment is that yields were quite a bit down on last year. This is mainly because we took about 25% of the fruit off the vines in August which is known as a green harvest. August was very wet and cold and we were worried that the grapes wouldn't ripen enough. By taking off fruit all the plant's energy is focused on ripening a smaller quantity. As it happens, we had a bit of an Indian summer but we can't gamble on the weather. As Alex quite rightly says "quality is more".

We will be releasing Silent Pool Rosé 2015 next May. There will only be 5000 bottles compared to the 6000 this year which has pretty well already sold out. The 2015 wine for Albury Estate sparkling will be bottled next May for secondary fermentation and will probably be released in 2018.

Next month we will start pruning our 21,000 vines and early in the new year we will feed them with compost teas and a mix of biodynamic buffalo manure and compost from Laverstoke with various biodynamic preparations. Hopefully 2016 will be another good year!

Come and taste our new wines!

 

We are very excited to be releasing two new organic sparkling wines, Albury Estate Classic Cuvée and Albury Estate Blanc de Blancs. Both are available to taste and buy at the vineyard as follows:

Winter Opening Hours

13th November - 19th December

Fridays: 10am - 3pm

Saturdays: 10am - 5pm

Pop in to taste the new wines, chat to the team, and take a stroll around the vineyard.

Families are welcome and we have stickers and apple juice to entertain little ones leaving grown-ups free to taste wine.

You will receive a 10% discount off purchases of 6 or more bottles of the new sparkling wines when you buy directly from the vineyard on open days before Christmas - the perfect excuse to drink English bubbly for Christmas this year!

Don't miss our special Christmas event on Saturday 5th December (10am - 5pm) when we will have the Godalming Community Gospel Choir, finalists at the BBC Gospel Choir of the year, singing at the vineyard (music from 1pm). Join us for carols and mince pies, and stock up on some English sparkling wine for Christmas! This is a free event but please email info@alburyvineyard.com to reserve your space.

Winter Wine Tasting Opening Hours

We are very excited to be releasing two new organic sparkling wines, Albury Estate Classic Cuvée and Albury Estate Blanc de Blancs. Both are be available for tasting from mid November when we will be open at the vineyard as follows:

Winter Opening Hours

13th November - 19th December
Fridays: 10am - 3pm
Saturdays: 10am - 5pm

Pop in to taste the new wines, chat to the team, and take a stroll around the vineyard!

Don't miss our special Christmas event on Saturday 5th December (10am - 5pm) when we will have the Godalming Community Gospel Choir singing at the vineyard (music from 1pm). Join us for carols and mince pies, and stock up on some quality English sparkling wine for Christmas! This is a free event but please email info@alburyvineyard.com to reserve your space.

Green Harvest

This is always a difficult time of the year for me as we often we have to reduce the number of bunches of grapes on each vine so that the rest have a good chance of ripening properly.

The weather in June and July was warm, dry and sunny and as a result flowering and fruit set was very good, resulting in a lot of fruit on the vines. The Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir are particularly heavy. The bad news is that the weather during the last few weeks has been dreadful with huge downpours and low temperatures and we are unlikely to get enough sun and warmth to ripen all the grapes before harvest in mid October.

So we've decided to take off about 25% of the grapes, that normally just get thrown on the ground. Viticulturists call this a green harvest as it normally happens before veraison when the grapes change colour. Veraison has started but only just and we are probably a good week behind last year.

I know that this process will result in better quality fruit and therefore great wine, but it's still difficult to see bunches going to waste. This year we are going to try and use some of them to experiment producing a sauce vierge and some grape cordial with the help of Four Gables Fine Dining.

Opera at the Vineyard for Cancer Research UK

Last weekend, we held an opera event at the vineyard to raise money for Cancer Research UK. The event was a huge success and we raised over £1,500 for the charity.

Musicians from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama entertained 70 people with wonderful opera classics, which they were able to perform outside in the sunshine. Delicious canapés were served by Four Gables Fine Dining, and guests enjoyed Albury wine as well as local beer kindly donated by Tillingbourne Brewery.

Thanks to some extremely generous donations from local businesses, we raised £660 from raffle ticket sales alone!

We would like to thank everyone who helped make the event a sucessful and enjoyable one, and well done for raising so much money for Cancer Research UK! We hope to hold another opera event at the vineyard next year.

Le Manoir Aux Quat'Saisons chooses Albury Wines

Created by celebrated chef Raymond Blanc OBE, Belmond Le Manoir Aux Quat'Saisons is renowned for offering one of Britain's finest gastronomic experiences.

We are therefore delighted that our organic Silent Pool Rosé 2014 and Monty’s Pet Nat have been chosen to be included on their wine list, amongst some of the finest wines in the world.

Silent Pool Rosé is an elegant, dry, fresh, still Rosé wine made from Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes. It has aromas of strawberries and cream and characteristic summer fruit flavours with a long finish.  It was recently awarded a gold medal in the English and Welsh wine competition.

Monty Waldin, an expert in biodynamic wines, teamed up with Albury Organic Vineyard to produce Monty’s Pet Nat, which is the UK’s first Petillant Naturel. It is a natural fresh sparkling wine with a cloudy sediment which adds to its character. It has a ripe pear, zesty and citrus nose, and is dry on the palate with notes of fresh lemons and a hint of mandarin in the finish.

Why not visit Belmond Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons for a gastronomic treat accompanied by our award winning wines.

Bees on the vineyard!

As many of you know, we have had bees living on the vineyard since May this year and they have now produced our first Albury honey! The bees are looked after by Albury Wine Club member Sergio and we are very happy to have these busy workers living with us. Being an organic, and indeed biodynamic vineyard, we are always the first to encourage biodiversity!

Lots of people have asked us recently how the changeable weather is affecting the vines at the moment, so we asked Alex, our vineyard manager, what she thinks:

Vineyard manager Alex, with owner Nick

"The vineyard is looking glorious t‎hanks to a good start to the season. Fantastic weather at flowering at the beginning of July meant that fruit-set was completed in just one week. Now, thanks to some recent rain, the fruit is swelling and the grapes are already pea size. The canopy has reached the top of the trellis and shoot tipping has been taken place. Soon leaf plucking will be done as well to expose the berries to sunshine and greater air movement which will lessen the risk of disease. Now we just need more sun and warmth and hopefully it will all end with a successful harvest‎!"

Silent Pool Rosé wins Gold Award!

Much to our delight, Silent Pool Rosé 2014 has been awarded a Gold medal in the English and Welsh Wine of the Year Competition announced today.

It was one of only two rosés, and the only wine in Surrey, to be awarded a gold award. There were only 19 gold's in total amongst 327 entries. The wines were tasted blind by a panel of eminent judges including Anthony Foster MW (Chair), David Bird MW, Dee Blackstock MW, Robin Crameri MW, Sally Easton MW and Rebecca Hull MW.

We also had a great result for our first sparkling wine, Albury Estate Premier Cuvée, which was awarded a Silver medal - a fantastic achievement for our first bubbly.

The results are testament to the great team we have at Albury including our vineyard manager, Alex Valsecchi, and winemakers Ulrich Hoffmann (Silent Pool Rosé) and Mattieu Elzinger (Albury Estate Premier Cuvée).

Better order some now before it's all gone! Click here for stockists

Spring is in the air - Monty's Pet Nat Episode 12

A nervous moment for Monty! His precious grapes have been fermenting in tank for two weeks and he's about to taste the juice and check if it's going to plan or not.

You can view this video, and others in the series including Episode 11 - ripe for the picking, on the Monty's Pet Nat facebook page. You can also tweet about the wine @alburyvineyard @MontyWaldin using #MontysPetNat #naturalwine.

Monty's Pet Nat is the UK's first natural wine, and has been produced by Monty Waldin and Albury Organic Vineyard. It's now available to buy from Les Caves de Pyrene, and is also available in some wine bars specialising in natural wine. To find out more about what it's all about, visit www.alburyvineyard.com/montys-pet-nat. Thanks to Seablue Media for producing these brilliant videos!

New Wine Releases for 2015

 

May 2015 saw the release of several new wines from Albury Vineyard! We are thrilled to say that our Silent Pool Rosé gets better each year, with the 2014 vintage being the best yet, and our long-awaited Albury Estate Premier Cuvée has been extremely well received!

In additon, you will probably all have seen that we have made the UK's first petillant naturel - Monty's Pet Nat. Monty Waldin, an expert in biodynamics, and Albury Vineyard have been filmed making this natural wine by Seablue Media, and we hope that you have all enjoyed the video clips, which we think are informative as well as entertaining.

This year we have also experimented with a white wine. Only 220 bottles have been made of Linda's Pinot, which is named after Nick's wife. This still blend of pinot grapes has been extremely popular with wine club members and vineyard visitors, so maybe we will make some more next year!

If you are interested in buying our wines, please see our website for stockists. Also, we are now open for vineyard tours and wine tasting and would love you to visit us. And don't forget our upcoming pop-up restaurant and opera events!

Here is some more information about our 2015 wines...

Silent Pool Rosé 2014 (11.5% vol, certified organic): "Silent Pool Rosé 2014 is an elegant, fresh, classically pink-hued still Rosé wine made from Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes. On the nose it opens with alluring aromas of strawberry, light cherry and peach followed by flavours of red fruits and pink grapefruit that meld with layers of clean minerality. The wine displays enticing flavours of raspberry, honeycrisp apple and bright citrus on the mid-palate, with balanced acidity and a long finish.” (Winemaker, Ulrich Hoffmann).

Albury Estate Sparkling Premier Cuvée (11.5% vol): Only 1500 bottles of this wine were produced from the 2011 and 2012 vintages. “Albury Estate Premier Cuvée is the first quality sparkling wine produced by Albury Organic Vineyard. The wine is made from a blend of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier and Seyval Blanc grapes. It is an elegant, crisp, dry bubbly, with citrus fruit aromas and a hint of melon and honey.” (Winemaker, Matthieu Elzinga, Litmus Wines).

Linda's Pinot (11% vol): Only 220 bottles have been produced of this still, white wine. It is a blend of Pinot Gris (66%), Pinot Noir (20%) and Pinot Meunier (14%). Linda’s Pinot has the classic Pinot Gris golden yellow colour with a hint of pink. On the nose it opens with citrus fruit and pear aromas followed by flavours of apple and hints of lemon. It has low acidity and balanced minerality. 

Monty's Pet Nat (9.5% vol, certified biodynamic): Monty Waldin, an expert in biodynamic wines, teamed up with Albury Organic Vineyard to produce Monty’s Pet Nat, which is the UK’s first Petillant Naturel. Only 600 bottles of this wine were produced from hand selected Chardonnay grapes. Monty’s Pet Nat is a lively fresh sparkling wine with a cloudy sediment which adds to its character. It has a ripe pear, zesty and citrus nose, and is dry on the palate with notes of fresh lemons and a hint of mandarin in the finish. Serve chilled, when the weather is warm. 

We hope that you will enjoy our wines as much as we do, and look forward to seeing you at the vineyard sometime soon.