You should try this sparkling wine from England!

Love bubbles, but don’t have the budget for Champagne? You should try this sparkling wine from England – it’s every bit as good as French Champagne but for half the price. Our Partner Sommelier Marc Supsic gives a brief background on England’s wine history, an English Sparkling Wine tasting, and then some Sparkling wine and food pairing suggestions that will be great with this wine.

Have you heard of WTSO Premium Wine Club? We’re now offering a chance to taste the wines from past sets, with NO OBLIGATION or membership required! Just head over to our “Bottle Shop” and make your selections. You can even schedule a private tasting with WTSO partner Sommelier Marc Supsic.

Purchase this amazing Chardonnay and other great wines here: https://www.wtso.com/wine-subscription-bottle-shop

0:00 The backstory of English Sparkling Wine
2:00 Balfour Winery’s 1503 “Hush Heath” Brut
2:47 Tasting English Sparkling Wine
3:37 Sparkling wine and food pairing suggestions
4:37 Is English Sparkling Wine better than Champagne?
4:54 get this wine and schedule a private tasting with Marc

when you think about sparkling wine the
classics come to mind like champagne for
example uh you might even say Northern
Italy prco or even California but
England let’s uncork a really unique and
amazing quality wine from the wtso
bottle
shop so England actually made wine in
the ancient times during the Roman era
uh no surprise there they made wine
pretty much everywhere during the Roman
era um but the island the UK is so
susceptible to changes in climate and
weather um that for hundreds of years
they weren’t able to make anything and
in the ancient times the Champagne
region didn’t like their sparkling wine
uh they didn’t want the bubbles in the
wine so they actually sold it to the
British kind of a little LoveHate
relationship that they have going on
with each other so they bought a lot of
their sparkling wine from France and it
wasn’t until the 1990s uh climate
scientists started to notice that the
Summers were getting warmer in England
and wine makers started to pick up on
the notion that maybe they could start
making wine here again interestingly
enough the climate and the soils in
Southern England were very similar to
that of Champagne France and when you
think about it geographically uh those
two continents were once smushed
together so they were actually part of
the same land why do you suppose it is
that it took so long why we do we not
think of the UK more when we think about
I mean in this case sparkling wine um a
lot of it is infrastructure it takes
time for everything to come online
reputation too reputation takes time to
build and also marketing too so places
like champagne and California have a
much large larger uh marketing budget
and bigger cache right and and their
reputation has been building over a
longer period of time right yeah yeah so
England is just catching up and so now
here we are in 2024 and we’re at the
point where English sparkling wines are
actually beating French champagne in
blind tasting competitions and this
particular wine here balour has been
around since 2004 and like most minies
in England they’re going to be
relatively young cuz it’s a relatively
young industry uh this was started by an
entrepreneurial husband and wife who
wanted to make their own English
sparkling wine and this is done to the
highest quality standards and it’s made
in the traditional method champen the
champagne method and this one is made
with the traditional champagne grapes P
Noir charday and p m do these companies
in the UK or other places in the world
do they tend to hire people from France
to come around and and and help them do
this absolutely yeah um Consulting is a
huge business in the wine industry and
uh they call them flying wine makers so
they’re actually wine makers who fly all
over the world and consult with these uh
startups all right so let’s taste this
look at that beautiful bubble on there
by the way uh we always say that you
know when the bubbles are fine like this
it’s an indication of a very high
quality sparkling wine you can see just
like how delicate and gently
effervescent this
is and that’s just a classic Aroma that
you would get from a champagne it’s like
buttered
biscuits it’s nice and gentle uh it’s
beautiful mousse in the mouth the moous
is kind of like the foam that you get
that’s the French term that’s the French
term of bubbles yeah bubbles citrusy
acidic uh lots of lemon in there and
definitely some green apple as well too
and then that beautiful like Buttered
Biscuit finish on there and would you
compare it closer to like a French
version or like a California vers it’s
definitely closer to France all right we
got a little bit of sunshine peeking out
here from behind the cloud so I think
it’s time to talk about some food
pairings gods were asking for it yes uh
with a really nice light and bright
cleaned uh wine like this you can pair
this with with some fatty foods uh
because it’s really going to kind of
cleanse the pallet truffled french fries
uh so something with a little grease in
it a little oil be perfect kind of fun
pairings that everybody talks about with
sparkling wine all the time uh salty
things like popcorn potato chips and
pretzels poutine would be like oh but
you could probably do like a turkey
poutine shellfish would always go well
with something like this uh when you’re
talking about oysters Minette sauce
actually literally uses sparkling wine
how about something English though
something British sticky toffee
pudding toffee pudding would actually go
well you know when you have a dry wine
like this uh it’s always nice with a
little bit of counterbalance of
Sweetness in there Indian food is very
popular in London and England like a
cream curry sauce would be perfect
that’s the takeaway for me is that
English sparkling wine is every bit as
good as French champagne and it’s
slightly more affordable so um you know
where you’ll spend like $75 or something
like that for a comparable champagne
you’re going to get this for about half
the price so you can get this and wines
like this over at the wtso Bottle Shop
these are all from previous premium wine
club tastings you can buy them without
any obligation mix and match them and
you can even do a private wine tasting
with me and for tons more informative
videos about the world of wine like this
one be sure to subscribe to the wtso
YouTube channel thanks so much for
joining us today and uh I’ll see you for
the next class of wine cheers everybody