Exton Park launches new 'multi vintage' Blanc de Blancs

By James Lawrence

Published: 16 September, 2021

Sparkling wine producer Exton Park has unveiled a new 100% Chardonnay cuvée based exclusively on reserve wines.

It is the first sparkling wine released by the Hampshire-based vineyard that completely eschews the Champagne NV model of selecting wines from a particular harvest to form the base, with older wines then used to 'top up' the final product.

Instead, winemaker Corinne Seely has exclusively relied on reserve Chardonnay wines from her 10-year-old library, harvested from the producer’s 60-acre single vineyard in the Meon Valley.

Marketed as RB45 Blanc de Blancs (RRP £49), 25% of the wines in the RB45 were aged in second-hand oak barrels from Bordeaux and Burgundy, while 30% underwent malolactic fermentation. The wine spent three years on the lees before disgorgement – dosage 9g/l.

Seely commented: “I have always been intrigued by the character of Chardonnay in England – it’s different to other places in the world; brighter, longer, straighter, and with lots of personality. For me, this wine is the magnificence of the expression of an English Chardonnay and the chalk of Exton Park.”

The RB45 will also bear the producer’s new brand identity, with labels depicting the patchwork of plots in Exton Park’s single vineyard, with the ‘peel and reveal’ neck foil unveiling one of four landscape photographs of the vineyard in the Meon Valley – a UK first.

It completes the Reserve Blend portfolio, joining the RB23 Rosé, the RB28 Blanc de Noirs and the RB32 Brut.

“Over the past 10 years, I have tried different ways of expressing the Chardonnay from each harvest, sometimes with oak and sometimes with MLF. The RB45 is my perfect melody, comprising each individual reserve to create the finest expression of the grapes and the terroir,” said Seely.

The Exton Park wines are available to the UK off- and on-trade via Bancroft Wines.

Printer friendly version