It's not a tip that you'll see offered by most wine experts, but Jean Christophe Novelli, the celebrated French chef, is bashing around the kitchen of the restaurant overlooking Denbies vineyard in search of a microwave, as we all look on bemused. "The wine is too cold," he says, holding a bottle of their Redlands, a deep berry-coloured blend of Pinot Noir and Dornfelder grapes. "Just wait and see. You won't believe the difference. Just four or five seconds..." Ping! We taste - first the glass of the red that had cooled in the cellar, then Novelli's microwaved wine. Even I, as a complete wine dunce, can taste the difference. "More body, more aroma, more flavour," says Novelli. "Like it's taken its clothes off," agrees Elfrida Spooner, the wine sales manager. "That's not always a good thing," points out Novelli, although we all agree that in this case it is.
Denbies is England's largest single-estate vineyard, covering some 265 acres of Surrey countryside. The land used to be a pig farm but was bought by Adrian White in 1984 after a friend, a geology professor, told him this area of England was once joined to the Champagne region in France and that they shared the same chalky soil. His son, Christopher White, is the general manager and is as passionate about his wine as everyone who works at Denbies (it employs 150 people) seems to be. "I went on holiday recently, travelling through the wine regions in France and when people asked what I did, they laughed," says White. "They couldn't believe we were producing English wine."
For a long time, English wine has been seen as a joke, but all that is changing (although the rainstorms this summer have been a setback). At last year's International Wine Challenge, the world's biggest and most respected wine competition, seven of Denbies' 11 wines won awards, with their Greenfields Sparkling Cuvée 2003 picking up a Silver medal. That same sparkling wine won the Gold Award at last year's International Wine & Spirit Competition. In the cellar, where beautifully-carved oak barrels sit along one wall, the Denbies wines are lined up for us to try.
Novelli sniffs his glass of Greenfields, before taking a large sip. "Very powerful, very good," he says. "Look," he says to me, holding his glass up to the light at an angle. "There are fewer, slower bubbles. The control of the gas is perfect." It's not very fair on the next sparkling white, Whitedowns Classic Cuvée. "It's lacking body, but it's not bad at all considering it's still a young wine," says Novelli. "We're talking details here. It's very good." At £5.99, Surrey Gold is one of Denbies' most popular wines - a fresh, dry white, rich in floral aromas (I'm reading from the tasting notes here - with my unsophisticated palate, I would just describe it as "yummy"). "The aroma is 10 out of 10," says Novelli. "Drinking it is a delight, it's perfect - especially for the price."
Others are sipped and marvelled at, but then comes Ortega, named after the hardy grape variety. It is taste bud-poppingly complex. "Ohhhhhhh," says Novelli, when he smells it. "Fantastique!" He seems lost for words. "I haven't been disappointed by anything today, but this is the best wine I've tasted for a long time. It delivers the punch." Which is high praise indeed - Denbies is the third vineyard we have visited and we've tasted more than 20 English wines. Novelli had never tasted English wine, so we decided he was the perfect man to try. Could a Frenchman be persuaded that English wine was as good as, if not better than, wine that came from France, elsewhere in continental Europe or the New World? He claims not to have any preconceptions about English wine. "I have no doubt that British winemakers will produce some of the finest wine, but my only concern - and I hope I'm wrong - is that the consistency of the climate is not on their side," he says.
Novelli came to Britain almost 25 years ago and has reached celebrity chef status, thanks to his restaurants, books and TV shows. He found that England gave him the freedom to develop his own style of cooking, and he thinks English winemakers will have the same autonomy. He has already decided to put English wine on the list at the first of his gastropubs, his latest venture, and at his cooking academy. "Most French wine is very good, and some is exceptional, because it has a legacy and the winemakers are some of the most consistent. But here, there isn't that history of winemaking, so winemakers luckily don't have to follow so rigid a format. They are still developing a new style as long as there are people like us, wine lovers, who are willing to appreciate it."
English wine is just that (there are a handful of vineyards in Wales): wine made from grapes grown in vineyards, based mainly in southern England. "British wine" is something else entirely and by all accounts to be avoided, as it is simply wine that is made in other countries, perhaps Greece or Spain, and blended over here, and is little more than reconstituted juice. If English wine has a bad name, some of the blame can be put on British plonk. The Quality Wine Scheme, a UK equivalent to the Appellation Contrôlée that monitors the French wine industry, was set up in 1992 to try to raise the profile of good English wines.
We started at Chapel Down vineyard in Kent. It is so idyllic even the grey morning weather can't make it look bad. Gentle hills surround it on all sides, herds of alpaca graze in a field next door and rabbits dart across the neat rows of vines. They might look cute, but they are a pest to young vines, which haven't yet grown out of their reach.
As well as this 25-acre vineyard, Chapel Down has 20 others dotted around the countryside, which means that if a frost hits one vineyard - even with global warming, which has played a part in enabling England to become a successful wine producer, this is still a risk - the others may not be affected. Guy Tresnan, the marketing and sales manager, says that Chapel Down's wine has really taken off only in the past three years (they produce 650,000 bottles a year, but plan to increase that to two million by 2010). It is served in some of the best restaurants, including those run by Gary Rhodes and Gordon Ramsay. "People might have had a bad impression of English wine before, but that's definitely changing," says Tresnan. "People are concerned about food miles, so they think twice about buying wine from Australia or New Zealand. They care about provenance and want local produce. Also, restaurants can send their sommeliers here to see how and where the wine is produced - they won't be able to do that with the majority of wines on their list."
The winemaker, Owen Elias, a quiet, modest man (he has won UK Winemaker of the Year four times, though I had to look that up - he would never have offered that information), has been with Chapel Down since 1992. "You can't be sacked for being drunk," Novelli says to him. "You're very lucky."
We try five of Elias's wines. What are we looking for? "A good aroma," says Novelli. "Clarity in colour, and an interesting taste and aftertaste." Three stand out to Novelli - a sparkling Pinot Reserve ("Oh, that's very good. Definitely a beauty"), the Pinot Noir ("I love the smell already," says Novelli, swirling and sniffing before he tastes it. "It's perfect, lovely. A lot of maturity.") and the white Lamberhurst Estate Bacchus Reserve. It is agony leaving five bottles of wine unfinished, especially the Pinot Reserve, whose bubbles seem to be trying to get my attention, but we have to leave.
At RidgeView, Michael Roberts, the owner and winemaker greets us. He founded the estate with his wife, Christine, and it is very much a family business - their son and daughter, daughter-in-law and in the future perhaps their grandchildren all work there.
He grows only Champagne varieties at his 90-acre Sussex vineyard, whose combination of chalk and clay is very similar to the Champagne region of northern France, and they use traditional Champagne-making techniques. Rows of vines stretch across his fields like chunky green necklaces, a rose bush planted at each end to act as a warning system (the bugs that like to attack the vines will get to the roses first).
In the 13 years since Roberts planted his first vines after selling his computer business, RidgeView has won a huge number of awards, including one for the best sparkling wine in the 2005 International Wine and Spirit Competition.
We try Bloomsbury 2004, a blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Meunier grapes, which is a pale golden colour and fizzes beautifully. "Perfect," says Novelli. "Many elements are succeeding one after one. At first you think it's too sharp but it's not. Ooh la la, this is unbelievable." Another one, Grosvenor, is "not as distinctive but lovely".
Then comes a surprise: a sparkling red wine. "We produced less than 1,000 bottles of this as an experiment to see how people would react," says Roberts. He brings it out, dusts it off and Novelli is amazed. "I've never seen anything like it," he says. It's a traditional Champagne bottle, but dark with the crimson liquid. "I'm trying to imagine what it will taste like. I have no idea."
When poured, it is the colour of ripe strawberries with a light pink froth. He takes a sip. "It's fabulous, very unusual. I would have expected it to have a sweetness, but it hasn't. The colour is very impressive, it is so rich. To achieve that is extraordinary." Does he think sparkling red could take off? "Yes, why not? It's original. One day it might be as recognisable in this country as sticky toffee pudding."
In the car on the way to Denbies, Novelli is clearly impressed with both Chapel Down and RidgeView. The only thing he doesn't get is why none of the wines we try shout about the fact that they are English on their labels. "I don't understand," he says. "This should be a selling point, a point of pride at achieving these amazing results, but I just keep hearing that if you put 'English wine' on the label, they are worried it will turn people off. That really p***es me off when I hear people say that. I could understand if we were dealing with Alaska, but we're not."
By the time we've finished at Denbies I'm a little tipsy (I think Novelli might be too, because he seems to be very excited about the microwave). "Today, I've felt like a foreign spy who has managed to walk into the back rooms of MI5," he says. "When we drove in to the Denbies vineyard, I felt like I was lost somewhere between Côtes de Duras and somewhere in California."
So what does Novelli make of English wine? "It's fantastic," he says. "A lot has been achieved and there are many versatile wines. I'm not surprised that the English wine industry has come so far, because when you look back at how much has already been achieved with British food, this is a much expected result.
"I love the great sense of passion and belief. It is still a young industry, so I can imagine what it will be like in the near future when we will be enjoying a selection of British vintages. Sacre bleu!"
For more information about Jean Christophe Novelli and his projects: jeanchristophenovelli.com; +44 (0)1582 454 070. For more information about the wines above and to order them online: denbiesvineyard.co.uk; +44 (0)1306 876616 chapeldownwines.co.uk; +44 (0)1580 763033 ridgeview.co.uk; +44 (0)845 3457292. High Life travelled with Quintessentially Driven, the new bespoke car service providing chauffeur-driven luxury across the UK. Their comfortable Jaguar XJs have almost a metre of legroom and fantastic in-car entertainment. The team can also organise everything from Mercedes to Bentleys. To experience the ultimate chauffeur service visit quintessentiallydriven.com or call +44 (0)870 383 3555.
