Five minutes with Patrick McGrath MW

By Andrew Catchpole

Published: 29 October, 2024

Over a sneak preview of the recently disgorged (and as yet to be released) Domaine Evremond Classic Cuvée – the joint sparkling venture in Kent between Champagne Taittinger and its UK agent-importer Hatch Mansfield – Andrew Catchpole catches up with Hatch’s Patrick McGrath MW, who explains the inspiration for this ambitious project.

There’s always a challenge with the first wine. You only have a small amount of reserve wine, from very young vines, and it’s made without any earlier wines to refer to. This has only been disgorged for four weeks – and the Classic Cuvée won’t be released until spring – but there’s already a real finesse to the wine and it will develop further with both age in the bottle and as the vines age in future years.

We’ve been working with Taittinger for 25 years and the inspiration [for Evremond] was seeing the growth in English sparkling wines. Knowing that we have such a strong partnership together, we could draw on the expertise from Champagne, both on the viticultural and winemaking sides. Then, from our point of view, we have excellent knowledge of the distribution and marketing. So we could bring the talents of Hatch Mansfield and Champagne Taittinger together. It’s also a real endorsement of English sparkling wine.

Initially, Evremond will primarily be sold in the UK. But if you talk to Charles Simpson at [nearby] Simpson’s, he is exporting 30% of his sparkling wines, Scandinavia is an enormous market for him. And they are making some really good wines, so there is no reason why we couldn’t do the same once we are more established in the UK. It’s still really early days.

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