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English Pinot Noir
2020 Panel Tasting
We tasted 12 of the best English Pinot Noir from the outstanding 2020 vintage with a panel of industry experts. Some of the results were quite surprising.
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English Pinot Noir Emerges
English Pinot Noir is beginning to emerge from under the shadow of English Sparkling Wine’s success to become one of the country’s most exciting wines in its own right.
English red wine was named as one of the wine trends to watch in 2023, and of the 10 highest-scoring English reds on jancisrobinson.com, 8 of them are English Pinot Noirs. The buzz around English Pinot is beginning to go mainstream.
English Sparkling Wine is already widely acknowledged as world class. Its winemakers have been very successful at getting the story of their chalky soils and Champagne-like climate out to the wider world. Most restaurants, independent merchants, and supermarkets now have a selection of ESWs.
Yet peruse the same restaurants’ wine lists, or the shelves of your local wine shop or supermarket, and English Pinot Noir will often be conspicuous by its absence.
Expert Panel
To address this lack of visibility, MARASBY assembled a panel of industry experts and wine buyers to blind-taste 12 English Pinot Noir from the excellent 2020 vintage. The selection took in 7 of the top scoring English Pinot Noirs on jancisrobinson.com, the Pinot Noir Trophy winner from last year’s WineGB awards, and several other of our favourites.
We weren’t just preaching to the converted. As well as several English wine champions, we also invited Melania Battiston – Head Sommelier and Buyer at Medlar restaurant, Shana Dilworth from Burgundy specialist importer Thorman Hunt, and Jon Higgs – Associate Director at fine wine specialists Chelsea Vintners.
English Pinot Noir Tasting
Note on the tasting – while our panellists knew that they would be tasting 12 English Pinot Noirs from the 2020 vintage, the order of tasting was assigned randomly in advance, and wines were served to our panel in blind-tasting bags.
Wine 1: Martin’s Lane Vineyard Pinot Noir
Crouch Valley, Essex
13.5%
16.5 Points, jancisrobinson.com
Intense, powerful nose. Hints of spices – cloves and liquorice. Wild strawberry. Rather Givry-like. Very rounded and silky palate. Juicy finish. Hints of maraschino cherry and minerals in the long, intense finish.
Wine 2: Lyme Bay Winery Pinot Noir
Devon (fruit from Martin’s Lane Vineyard, Crouch Valley, Essex)
12.5%
16.5 Points, jancisrobinson.com
Amazing nose. Almost like a rustic Nuit-St-Georges. Lovely integrated oak character with forest berries flavours, subtle sweetness and great balance. It was a fascinating coincidence that we tasted the two wines made from Martin’s Lane fruit side by side – and amazing how different they were!
Wine 3: Still Pinot Noir by Hattingley Valley
Hampshire (fruit from Kent)
11.0%
15 Points, jancisrobinson.com
A real contrast to the first two wines. Nose is quite herbaceous, almost slightly funky, with hints of autumn forest floor overlaying the red berry fruit. Great intensity on the palate, charming but wild.
Wine 4: Davenport Vineyards Diamond Fields Pinot Noir
East Sussex
11.5%
Not reviewed, jancisrobinson.com
Very pure and juicy, with great intensity of fruit underlying a pretty, elegant exterior. Juicy blueberry and blackcurrant aromas, with hints of quince paste. Chewy tannins suggest 3-5 years’ ageing potential. Would love to come back and look at this again in a future tasting.
Wine 5: Heppington Single Estate Pinot Noir
Kent
11.0%
16 Points jancisrobinson.com
The lightest in colour of our selection yet favoured by our panel for its appealing raspberry jam fruit and its elegantly juicy palate. Light-bodied, but not lacking in intensity in any way. Would be delicious served lightly chilled with sushi.
Wine 6: Gusbourne Boot Hill Pinot Noir
Kent (fruit from Rother Valley, East Sussex)
12.0%
15 Points, jancisrobinson.com
Trophy, Best Pinot Noir, WineGB Awards 2022
Much more intense nose than many others. Exotic spices. Dark cherry fruit. smoked earth. BBQ meat. Very silky, rounded palate. Great intensity. One of the most commonly ‘top three’ wines selected by our panel. Another one that would be great to come back to in 3 – 5 years’ time.
Wine 7: Artelium Artefact #1 Barrel Aged Pinot Noir
East Sussex (Rother Valley)
12.5%
17 Points, jancisrobinson.com
Really impressive. Intense purple colour and big! nose. Incredibly concentrated palate of swirling kirsch and redcurrant jelly. Long finish, quite oaky, with ripe yet chewy tannins – another that will be great to try in 3 – 5 years’ time.
Wine 8: Giffords Hall LVII – XIX Pinot Noir
Suffolk
12.0%
17 Points, jancisrobinson.com
Very perfumed nose, with notes of black plum, rhubarb and liquorice, and a heady musk character in the background. Hints of rare, griddled beef and iron fillings. Beautifully long, intense finish. Very pretty.
Wine 9: Simpsons Rabbit Hole Pinot Noir
Kent
12.5%
16 Points, jancisrobinson.com
Perhaps the most rounded, silky and seamless of our selection. Beautifully pure red fruit aromas, with flavours of cranberries and hints of smoky earth and quince jelly. While few of our panel picked this as their favourite wine, almost all included it in their top three, which talks to the widespread appeal of its style.
Wine 10: Oxney Organic Estate Single Estate Pinot Noir
East Sussex (Rother Valley)
12.0%
16 Points, jancisrobinson.com
Beautifully elegant, fragrant Pinot nose. Expansive, silky palate of raspberry/strawberry fruit and noticeable, well-balanced vanilla oak character. Long, persistent finish with well balanced acidity and a clean aniseed finish.
Wine 11: Danbury Ridge Wine Estate Pinot Noir
Crouch Valley, Essex
13.0%
17 Points, jancisrobinson.com
This screamed ‘Crouch Valley’ from the rafters with its intense, concentrated, smoky nose. Gevrey-Chambertin to Lyme Bay’s Nuits-St-Georges. Weighty palate. Bags of Burgundian red fruit, subtle spices, elegant, balanced and refined. Come back in 5 years if you can bear to wait!
Wine 12: Oastbrook Pinot Noir
East Sussex (Rother Valley)
12.0%
16.5 Points, jancisrobinson.com
One of the tasting’s most vibrant noses of intense red fruit, quince paste and smoky bbq. Lovely intensity and weight, yet probably requires a little more time in bottle to allow the different components to knit together. Rather like a young Beaune – earthy minerals, appealingly rustic and offering bags of wild strawberry fruit.
For more perspectives on English Pinot Noir, read the article about the Marasby benchmark tasting in The Buyer.
Comments From Our Panel
English Pinot Noir
Jon Higgs, Associate Director, Chelsea Vintners:
“I thought all the wines had a good level of persistence. Regardless of other stylistic considerations, they all had really long finishes. They’re 2020s – with a few more years in bottle, that’ll come out a bit more.”
Melania Battiston, Head Sommelier and Buyer, Medlar Restaurant:
“From the point of view of being a buyer, diners are looking for alternatives to Burgundy, which is becoming way too expensive. They’re trying to go somewhere else, and it’s the sommelier’s responsibility to help them decide where to go. I think there are opportunities here, and I would definitely buy some wines for my list. They would fit the target for Medlar and we would definitely be able to sell them.
“I’ve never had the chance to taste so many English Pinots side by side, so it was brilliant! They’re at a price point where people can discover them, especially from people they trust. At Medlar we have lots of regulars, you build a relationship and I believe there is potential for these wines.”
Comments From Our Panel
English Pinot Noir
Shana Dilworth, Thorman Hunt:
“Fascinating tasting! We work with Furleigh and Woodchester at Thorman Hunt. There’s definitely a great market out there for the wines. I think English Pinot has so much of a great possibility ahead.”
Steve Parker, Author of British Cheese on Toast:
“I find Pinot fascinating because it’s so easy to pair with lots of things, but so hard to generalise. It depends on the Pinot.
“The tasting covered three main styles. Oastbrook for example would be divine with Isle of Mull. It’s made in a cheddar style. The cows are fed with leftover grain from Tobermory distillery, so the milk and the cheese are boozy and that would be great with the smokiness of Oastbrook’s Pinot.
“Martin’s Lane and Lyme Bay would go really well with some aged goats cheese. I’d recommend one called ‘Rachel’. Bermondsey Hard Pressed is a Gruyere-style cheese made in London and would be good with some of the juicier styles like Heppington’s.”
Comments From Our Panel
English Pinot Noir
Ed Dallimore, Author of Vineyards of Great Britain:
“It was such a valuable exercise to taste all the Pinot Noirs side by side from the same vintage. To echo others, it was a great demonstration of why you shouldn’t generalise. Heppington and Danbury Ridge were at opposite ends of the scale in terms of body, weight, colour and taste especially.
“Overall, the standard was really high. It’s an example of where we’ve come as an industry that we’re now talking regionally. Not just Essex, but Rother and parts of Kent. It’s impossible to say that English Pinot is one thing.”
Brad Horne, Digital Content Creator and Wine Communicator:
“From a communication and social side, more people are visiting vineyards and getting the story behind sparkling wines, so we need to communicate that we’re making great still wines now.
“I don’t think they’ll go 10-15 years, but they’re approachable, and at a pricepoint with Burgundy up to ridiculous levels, there are some wines that sit well with Burgundy drinkers. They’re still on an upwards trajectory, but there are already some good examples.”
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