English Wine Week – Fizz –

Find the full article here 
Published 18th June 2021 by JancisRobinson.com

“Exton Park have completely rebranded and have taken a radical step in a new direction. Blending magician and obsessive Corinne Seely has worked with Vineyard Director Fred Langdale over the past 10 years to get the gritty details of their 24-ha (60 Acre) vineyard, dividing it into nine plots by terroir and vinifying parcel by parcel, year by year, to build an extensive library of reserve wines. They’re moving away, totally, from single-vintage releases or even cuvées based on one or two vintages. Instead, the entire focus of Exton Park is now going to be on their RB (reserve blend) wines, which are compositions of 23 to 32 different wines. Seely told us, ‘When I start it’s like a big puzzle. When I start I have so many different wines and I have to compose it in my head. I try to memorise the different tastings. I play with it for weeks, months. It takes a long time.’ The result is wines that are Kaleidoscopically complex and exciting. The rosé had me buzzing for days.  

Rosé

Gorgeous coppery pink. I have, quite honestly, never smelt such beautiful fragrance on a sparkling rosé. Mouth-watering before it’s gone anywhere near my mouth. Complex, rich, and the fruit on the wine takes my breath away. Ripe cherry, hibiscus tea – so, so intense. Spicy. Glorious. Corinne Seely has really moved into a new dimension with these wines.  

Brut

Bright, bright lemon yellow. I can smell the chalk. Wildflowers. The smell of thick lemon peel as you slice it with a sharp knife and the oils fill the air. Heady florals build as the wine stands in the glass – like the waxy, heavy white hyacinths on my kitchen table that fill the air when I walk into the kitchen in the early morning. Wet granite rocks after a storm. Lemon bonbon. Sherbet. Such intense lemon on the palate that it tastes as if it is electric current running through citrons turned into chandeliers of citrus crystals catching every blade of light. A wine that carves its way down your body, like a world class skier carving her way down the pristine white of a black run. So seemingly effortless, so graceful so exquisite, so skilled. Grandeur, power, purity.  

Blanc de Noirs

So rich on the nose that I couldn’t stop inhaling it – eyes closed, my whole body drinking in the aroma. I almost forgot to taste it! Lemon crème anglaise, frangipani, fresh-out-the-oven challah bread. Heady florals, like an orchard of plum blossom and hedgerow clouds of blackthorn blossom. Lemongrass. Lemon verbena. The acidity is breath-taking. It’s a sherbet-shot needle through marble bones. Hazelnuts mandolined over chicory leaves. A drop of walnut oil. I know that Corrinne Seely has always said she doesn’t want to make a champagne-like wine, she doesn’t want to make a copy. But when I tasted this blind, I scrawled in my notebook, ‘this tastes like champagne, a fine one, stunning’. There is such depth to this wine that it left my neck and spine tingling.”

Find the full article here.