I first visited Exton Park in 2018. The rolling vineyard estate, owned by a local Hampshire watercress magnate, was rather impressive and had been running for several years with some rather enjoyable sparkling wine releases on the market. But on my visit, French winemaker Corinne Seely said that, although she had been making wine there since 2011, she hadn’t yet released the true ‘Exton Park’ wines, and that would take a few more years to come. Last week I visited Exton Park again, this time virtually over Zoom, and Corinne finally revealed the wines she had been planning to make all along — launching its RB range. RB stands for Reserve Blends and relates to their sparkling wines being made from several different reserve wines over a wide range of vintages, plots, varieties and exposures. The wines are neither vintage, nor non-vintage in a traditional sense, and it’s a groundbreaking sparkling English wine concept, for many reasons, starting from the vineyard up:
Single estate, but multi-site
Located in the Meon Valley, Exton Park today has a 60 acre-estate planted on south- and southeast-facing chalk slopes. Having planted 10 acres every year, the focus has been on creating a patchwork of grape varieties, sites and exposures to create a diverse bank of reserve wines.
As Vineyard Manager Fred Langdale took us on a tour of the vineyard, driving through it with a camera man propped on the back of his pick up truck, he explained how the different plots offer a good diversity of wines: depending on the planting density, the altitude, the vines and varieties. We also got a view of their new five acre vineyard of east-facing Pinot Meunier, planted in 2019, just beyond a woodland with a stunning view across the South Downs. “You can just imagine how different the flavour is here — the microclimate is a bit warmer which allows us to prune these vines lower down and ripen Pinot Meaner nicely,” explained Fred, showing us the view over the South Downs National Park — which Exton Park happens to be in the middle of.
We also explored the woodlands with their bee hives, which love their blue-flowered cover crops of phacelia and chicory, and he explained the importance of sustainability to Exton Park. As a founding member of the Sustainable Wines of Great Britain accreditation, it’s something the team take quite seriously. Not only is the diversity found in the different micro plots and exposures, but offered by the microbiology too. The vineyard is maintained by a flock of sheep who trim the grass down and fertilise the vineyard (with their much lower carbon footprint than tractors) and the woodland corridors also help bring greater microbial activity to the vineyards too. The diversity of Exton Parks reserve wines all starts here.
A liquid library under lock and key
Our next stop was the winery with Corinne, where she described her winemaking process and she toured us through the state-of-the-art faciliies. “I knew if we wanted complexity we have to wait many years, and we are now ready!” she shared excitedly, finally seeing her first reserve blend wine coming to fruition after 10 years in the making. “We have been keeping our reserve wines all separately, in vineyard blocks, with these very small tanks. I believe we can create a new style — I may be French but I’m not here to copy Champagne, I am here to innovate and create!”
What is innovative about Exton Park is that for 10 years Corinne and her team have been preserving and keeping all of their wines under lock and key in a library of reserve wines, which she then blends — several years later — to make a single wine. Although this is heard of in Champagne, this is still rather unique in England where typically producers make either vintage wines (from one single vintage) or Non-Vintage wines (mainly from one vintage but with around 30% of other vintages blended in). “Corinne was one of the first people in the UK to start talking about building up reserves,” explained Kit Ellen, Director of Sales. “We are launching Reserve Blends — they are traditional method sparkling wines, which aren’t single vineyard but not Non-Vintage either. Non-Vintage typically have a base wine from a young vintage, but what Corinne is doing here is that the core is older reserve wine, with only a very small amount of young wine added to it. We are innovating and trying new things here at Exton Park, and today we are launching a new concept: Reserve Blend, RB!”
The names of the wines, RB32, RB23 and RB28, refer to the number of Reserve wines that have gone in the blend. So the RB32 Brut has 32 different wines in the blend, predominantly much older vintages. “To make sparkling you have to have a lot of patience, but in our case it’s even more!” Corinne explained. “I’m not in a hurry. Winemaking is an art and if you put too many rules on it [like restrictions in Champagne], you will destroy it. What I like about England is that it represents freedom, innovation and creativity!”
The youthful English sparkling wine industry certainly doesn’t lack innovation or excitement at the moment, and there was certainly a very innovative air to this Exton Park tasting — from the whirlwind tour of the vineyard, winery and new Grand Hall (all impressively managed over Zoom with 30 wine writers in attendance) to the release of these extraordinary wines.
The patience of Corinne and the whole team, not least of all the owner Malcolm Issac, in waiting 10 years before releasing their first flagship wine onto the market is no mean feat — but these wines prove they were worth the wait. Even more impressive is the very reasonable price tag, at around £40 a bottle — the equivalent in Champagne would set you back at least £60.
Good things do come to those who wait, and I eagerly anticipate returning to Exton Park one day in the future. When no doubt Corinne will be pulling a few more tricks from under her sleeve, or out from her liquid library.
Exton Park RB28 Blanc de Noir
A beautifully fresh but also complex nose with complex layers of yeast and pastry with chalky minerality on the finish and a tangy, citrus-sy acidity. It is precise, chiselled and dry with an inviting sweetness (10 gr/l) of dosage that interplays with the linear acidity. Rather tantalising.
£43
Exton Park RB23 Rosé
An incredibly aromatic wine with notes of blossoms, white pepper spice and fresh raspberry. This is a beautiful, layered wine which has a very unique taste and character being expressive, delicate and fresh.
£39
Exton Park RB32 Brut
With some 32 wines in the blend, this is a complex wine with notes of fresh cider apples, honey and lemon zest as well as lightly toasted notes of pastry and brioche and that trademark chalky minerality on the finish..
£39
