After a lovely time with our daughter and her family on the Friday evening and a relaxing morning, we set off in search of more vines! This time my co-driver on the way was our eldest granddaughter with hood down and in the sun and our middle granddaughter accompanied me on the return journey, hood up in the rain but we didn't mind!
Kent is probably the county with the most and possibly oldest vineyards in the country. Many of them though only produce sparkling wines. Which of course is fine but not completely in our remit of searching for the best red...and anyway it means we can immediately discount some visits which is as well with so very many to go!
Chapel Down however has not 1 but 2 or more reds so we were looking forward to this very much. Again, Chapel Down has a very fine and new visitor centre and winery and very good restaurant. We were happy to find that we could easily put a picnic together in their shop with lots of local cheeses and so on.
We enjoyed a super family picnic in the herb garden next to the vines.
Chapel Down began its successful journey 13 years ago to now have become the largest English wine producer with 100 acres of vineyards, increased to 326 acres by other sites growing for them under lease. Their wines are sold in many top restaurants and at Marks and Spencer and Waitrose for instance.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, hen parties are really enjoying wine tastings as part of their celebrations and there were 2 such parties here today!
The main grapes grown are Bacchus, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay; the sparkling wines figure quite a lot as is usual especially in this south east corner with the perfect "terroir".
I left Chris and our son-in-law to tasting today, I was having too much fun with my daughter and little girls. We even saw a flock, is it a flock or a herd?, of alpacas...
The boys made the decision to take home Union Red (a blend of Pinot Noir, Pinot Noir Precoce, Rondo and Dornfelder) and Wickham Estate red having decided the Pinot Noir alone was more like the usual English fruity red and may need laying down a little.
The dark clouds began to gather over the vines...
.....so we decided at the right time to head for home - all the girls wanted to go in Sassy I think...
It was with much interest that we sampled the reds later and wow, the Union red is the absolute best so far!
It really is a good red with a smooth taste and sufficient tannins to make it not taste English - if you know what I mean. I know in the end it is a matter of taste.....it's going to be fun to see if we can beat it....
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