This November, we’re championing the oft-underrated wines of the Loire Valley. Here, our Buyer Adam Bruntlett reflects on this rising star of a region, and explains what makes it so special

While I may spend most of my time in Burgundy, the Loire Valley is perhaps where my heart lies.

In fact, my first buying trip, back in January 2011, was to the Loire. Many of my most treasured wine memories are of Loire bottles. I’ve been banging this particular drum for some time. But now, it really feels as though there is momentum.

The Loire is France’s longest river, dotted with wine regions. Here, there are varying soil types, and numerous different grape varieties grown. Each region has its own identity and history. Yet for many years, the Loire has been a victim of its own success.

Its proximity and ease of access to Paris ensured many of the wines were consumed domestically in wine bars and brasseries. Often light, crunchy and sold for a modest price, these wines were a steady source of income – which did not encourage innovation or risk-taking. The same applies to the likes of Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé, both of which have strong export markets in the USA and UK.

The huge shame is that many of these wines are mass-produced on a fairly industrial scale for consumption within a year or so of bottling. The vast majority of Vouvray’s production is simple sparkling wine for consumption in France and Belgium. Yet, things are changing.

The Loire Valley today

Our recent trip to the Loire this summer revealed a region full of energy and dynamism. There is a significant movement towards making wines that put terroir at the heart of everything they do.

In the past many estates would make a couple of cuvées; one easy-drinking for the Paris brasserie market, and the other using old vines – often with rather excessive oak. Now, most quality-focused producers will separate out their best parcels. They adapt the winemaking and ageing to each site, to highlight the diversity of their terroirs.

There is a real melting pot of vignerons pushing things forward. Determined young growers such as Arnaud Lambert, Stéphane Riffault and Simon Chotard have taken over their family domaines and begun taking their wines in a bold new direction.

“Outsiders” such as Anatole de la Brosse at Domaine des Closiers and Luc Briand and Bénédicte Petit at Terra Vita Vinum are bringing a fresh perspective and innovative approach, perhaps less constrained by the past than locals.

Alongside this are established top names such as Vincent Carême, Philippe Alliet and Gauthier Frères who have been making wines of real excellence for many years and continue to reach greater heights.

Sustainable winemaking in the Loire

What is also amazing is the number of vignerons who are now determined to put the environment and sustainability at the heart of everything they do. Almost everyone we work with in the Loire is either organic certified or in conversion. Several are certified as biodynamic. In an area as cool and humid as the Loire, where pressure from mildew can be huge, this is no mean feat.

It is clear that something special is happening in the Loire. It is reminiscent of Burgundy in the 1980s or 1990s, with a huge and as-yet-unrealised potential. What puts the Loire ahead of Burgundy before it exploded is the sheer quality of the work in the vineyards and winery. Young winemakers here have travelled and studied around the world. They are innovative, humble and thoughtful.

It is clear that the quality of wines in the Loire has never been higher, and this is only the beginning.

The grapes of the Loire Valley

For top-quality wines, three grape varieties are king:

Sauvignon Blanc

Many will associate Sauvignon with aromatic, early drinking whites that are most suited to quenching thirst on hot days. However, anyone who has ever tasted the matured wines of François Cotat will appreciate the ageing capacity of this variety. Gone are any notes of gooseberry, replaced by a pleasing aniseed and fennel notes. While the Cotat style is quite esoteric, there is a small band of determined young growers who are making more ambitious, textural and age-worthy wines from single-vineyard plots.

Chenin Blanc

I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy some excellent expressions of Chenin Blanc: a pair of Bonnezeaux from 1916 and 1945, a 1978 Coulée de Serrant and many vintages from Domaine Huet. One of my all-time favourite white wines is Vincent Carême’s 2008 Vouvray, Le Peu Morier. I’ve sadly long since drunk the bottles I had, but I can still remember its wonderful apple and white truffle nose, as well as the rich and almost exotic fruit which was perfectly balanced by a nagging thread of acidity.

Cabernet Franc

My introduction to the ageing potential of Cabernet Franc came with a visit to Lamé Delisle Boucard. Philippe Boucard took us down into his cool cellar, cut deep into the tuffeau. Huddled around a table in a small grotto surrounded by mould-covered bottles, we went back in time through the 20th century, tasting every vintage ending in 9 back to 1919.

On another occasion, we chalked off all of the great vintages: 2009, 2005 (the one he wants to be buried with), 1989, three different 1976s, 1964, 1947, 1911.

What was striking about tasting with Philippe, was that the great vintages were all unusually warm years. The difference between then and now is that we have that kind of vintage seven times a decade, rather than once as in the past.

Final thoughts

Until as recently as the 1990s, only around one or two vintages a decade would achieve real ripeness. Now, you have to go back to 2013 or before to find a vintage that wasn’t at least very good. With a more meticulous approach to viticulture and improved winemaking techniques, even more challenging vintages such as 2021 can now produce pleasant bottles.

Browse our full range of Loire wines here.

We celebrated our 325th anniversary this year. For over one-third of that time, we’ve produced iterations of what’s now known as The King’s Ginger: our famed ginger liqueur. Fiery, warming and spiced, it’s an excellent choice for winter – and, as we find below, it’s also versatile enough to work well in a variety of cocktails  

King Edward VII’s Royal Physician first commissioned a “warming, revivifying tonic” from us in 1903. The result was the first iteration of The King’s Ginger: a unique and fiery spirit that the King would drink directly from a saddle flask, likely while driving his beloved Daimler in the winter months. 

Its popularity spread amongst aristocratic fishing and hunting parties – and beyond. Today, it remains a much-loved liqueur, although today it’s more likely to be sipped from a tumbler or cocktail glass than from the saddle flasks of old.  

The unique combination of warming ginger, fresh lemon zest and honeyed golden syrup flavours brings a distinctive twist to many a classic cocktail. Explore two of our favourites here. 

The King’s Fizz 

Champagne hardly needs an extra touch of decadence – but at Christmas, why not indulge in a sparkling cocktail or two? Here, we combine the honeyed spice of The King’s Ginger with all the complex fruit and pastry notes of our Brut Champagne, for a deliciously wintery drink. 

The King’s Penicillin

When The King’s Ginger was first created, both lemon and honey – key ingredients in our liqueur and this cocktail alike– were viewed as having highly medicinal properties. This is named in tribute; a splash of Sherry Cask Single Malt Scotch is balanced wonderfully by the sweet yet refreshing liqueur.  

Stock up on The King’s Ginger here.

Rural Hertfordshire is not exactly the rum capital of the world, but that hasn’t stopped Doug Miller. Here, the founder-distiller at Scratch Distillery shares his story.

“You want to make rum – in Britain?” The steely-eyed tax inspector glanced up from my distillery business plan. “We’ve never had a rum application before. Is it made the same way as gin?”

This was my second interaction with the good people who regulate the distilling sector.

The first had been a notice attached to a small copper still I’d imported from Spain to play around with: “It is illegal to distil in the United Kingdom without a licence. Prison or an unlimited fine.”

Eight years on, we’re filling casks in a fully restored stable block on a historic estate-turned-dedicated rum distillery. I can say very definitively that rum isn’t the same as gin, and that British rum isn’t the same as Caribbean rum.

It hasn’t all been plain sailing. It is very much a labour of love – and we are still really only just starting out on this journey.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

We set up Scratch Distillery in 2016. It was one of the first dedicated rum distilleries in the UK, certainly the first in England. We don’t make any other spirit.

While we had wanted to find a trendy and cool London archway, the many thousands of pounds in rent made that a non-starter. We looked at industrial estates, but the combination of equally high rents and a dour atmosphere made us reluctant. We almost gave up, until we were offered the chance to renovate a derelict 16th-century stable block in rural Hertfordshire. Disclaimer: it’s on land owned by family, so we got a helping hand in that regard.

You might assume that starting and running a distillery is the dream. I thought so too. You visit places on holidays which have all the fancy equipment, shiny stills and happy staff working away.

Having started from scratch, it’s safe to say that the reality is somewhat different. Standing in the stable block for the first time, in the cold winter of 2015, that fanciful interpretation faded quickly. Reality hit me like a tonne of sticky treacle.

First steps

First, for much of the year, it’s cold. So cold. Insulating a building costs money; we didn’t have lots of capital, so we skipped insulation.

Second, it’s exhausting. We couldn’t afford the fancy equipment, so we sourced most of our stuff second- or third-hand. Our first boiler was built in the United States the year Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency. It often needed a kick or two to fire up and took hours to do its thing. We didn’t even get close to buying a pump.

Third, the logistics – which really come into focus as you attempt to direct a heavy-goods vehicle down a small winding dirt track. While simultaneously trying to work out how you’ll unload the stuff without the aid of a forklift. (You make friends with the tractor-owning local farmer.)

MAKING THE GRADE

I started out on a small scale, trialling molasses from lots of different suppliers. Molasses, essentially treacle, is the base ingredient in rum production.

There are different grades of quality, typically ranging from low-grade blackstrap to A-grade. The latter is made directly from cane-juice molasses and is therefore higher in sugar content. It lends a far more aromatic and complex flavour than blackstrap. As it has been subjected to less heat than blackstrap, it contains relatively fewer sugar decomposition products; these can add bitterness to the flavour. The impact of the raw ingredient is huge on flavour development.

The problem with A-grade is twofold. One, it’s expensive – far more so than blackstrap. Two, it’s a very unforgiving substance when you try to move it around.

The best way is to heat it gently and then pump it. But when we started out, we couldn’t afford the powerful pump needed, and we were restricted by the limited electrical supply to heat the molasses.

Our molasses was delivered in 25-kilogram tubs, which would sit warming in the sun outside our distillery. Pouring the tubs into the fermenter was backbreaking work, but at least it saved on a gym membership.

ALCOHOL AS AN AFTERTHOUGHT

But all of this I was doing for a reason. Most large-scale commercial distilleries start with the objective of producing alcohol, an obsession with ‘yield’ and ‘consistency’. A consideration of flavour follows almost as an afterthought.

We take the opposite approach. Weirdly for a distillery, producing alcohol is one of the last things we think about. What we want to do is focus on creating the right conditions for a really interesting flavour profile that is different every time.

To do this, we must manipulate every single variable, to create a range of ferments using different approaches, ranging in alcohol-by-volume (ABV) from as low as 3-4% to a beer-like wash that emerges at 12-13%.

We use some untraditional yeasts along with bacteria to produce acidic washes with very different flavour profiles: heavily tropical, spicy or even oily, for example. These can then be distilled individually, blended and put into their own special cask. Never to be repeated. Different every time.

We’re fortunate with the UK’s inclement weather that we see very different profiles develop, fade and evolve throughout the year.

ONE FOCUS

This single process is as much a blessing as a curse. On one hand, it makes reporting back to the taxman ever so slightly simpler as we only have one product line to report against.

But on the flip side, we have to be mindful of cashflow as we aren’t making a product, like gin, that can be turned around in a day. We have to think years down the line. To build solid business foundations, without compromising on our approach, we launched our cask programme, selling a range of new-fill rum casks.

Berry Bros. & Rudd was our first customer – a sign perhaps, that British rum really could be something to get excited about. We’ll just have to wait a bit before we can all drink to that.

We are delighted to announce that the iconic Hambledon vineyard – a true piece of British heritage, established in 1952 – is now part of the Berry Bros. & Rudd and the Symington families.

The bid to acquire Hambledon was a joint venture between us and Symington Family Estates. The Symingtons have been Port producers in northern Portugal since 1882; we have worked together and been friends for many years, always sharing the same values and ethos.

An exciting new chapter ahead

This morning, our Chair Lizzy Rudd had this to say: “We are delighted to confirm this exciting joint venture with Symington Family Estates. Together, we are committed to sustainable viticulture and winemaking, and we believe that this business, which was the first commercial English vineyard of the modern era, has the foundations and potential to lead the way in the English sparkling wine category.”

Our delight was matched by our partners in Symington Family Estates. In the words of Johnny Symington, “It was going to take something very special for us to make wine in a new country, having produced port and wine in Portugal for five generations.” It was the quality of Hambledon’s wines which convinced them: “The quality of the wines is absolutely spectacular and is a reflection of the fantastic Hambledon terroir […]we believe that these are world-class sparkling wines, that will play a leading role in the development of English sparkling.”

It’s an exciting day for us all, and one that calls for sparkling wine to celebrate. A glass of Hambledon, anyone?