Regent Sedlescombe Organic Vineyard - Red

I bought this wine at a farmers market in Tunbridge Wells UK in 2010. It is a non-vintage wine so I suppose it is blended from more than one year. It is produced from organic grapes grown by organic standards. I kept it for opening on a special occasion, so I opened it when I had some American visitors to give them a taste of England. I was disappointed with wine and decided not to serve it to them. The reason why I was disappointed was the wine tasted very ordinary; it was light to medium bodied and I could just about taste some fruit character. It cost 15 pounds for the bottle at a discount. I would not expect a non vintage wine of this character to improve very much in the bottle. It was not bad wine but it could not hold a candle to a good Bordeaux or Rioja costing less. This is the problem with English wine for in the main it is so expensive compared to its competitors. I am sure that the vine growers and winemakers adhere to the highest standards but they cannot account for the British climate and weather which still does not favour red wine production even in the South of England.

In its place, I opened a bottle of La Croix de Beaucaillou 2006, the second wine of Château Beaucaillou. This wine cost 23 pounds at Majestic and the jump in quality was far more than the price difference. It showed all of the characteristic of a good Bordeaux red from St Julien and is not far short of the quality of the first wine. I could have kept it for another five years and it would have improved further.

The next day we opened a bottle of Denbies Flint Valley non vintage white wine. This wine was an improvement as it had hints of spice, gooseberries and minerals. It is produced from the Reichensteiner and Seyval Blanc grape varieties which suit a cooler climate. It tasted like an English white wine and it was light and refreshing so it had regional character. At 7 to 8 pounds a bottle it is quite expensive and in France I can buy much better quality white wines for this money.

It is a shame that English wine producers can not benefit in any way from the economies of scale. They will always be hard pressed to compete.