Hampshire

Hampshire's claim to wine fame rests on chalk. Not any chalk, but the specifically Cretaceous-age chalk that geologists know as the Seaford Chalk Formation — the same formation that underlies Champagne's Grand Cru vineyards of Cramant and Mesnil-sur-Oger, that famous territory for Blanc de Blancs of unimpeachable mineral precision. In Hampshire, it outcrops across the rolling downs south of Winchester, and it produces wines that are, at their finest, as linear and precise as anything made north of the Channel.

Hambledon Vineyard is the county's historical touchstone. Planted in 1952 by Major General Sir Guy Salisbury-Jones on a chalk hillside above the village that gave cricket its rules, it is one of England's earliest modern vineyards and today, under the winemaking direction of Champagne-trained Hervé Jestin, produces some of the county's most elegant sparkling wines. The Première Cuvée, made in great years, is a wine of real gravitas — not the exuberant fruitiness of some English sparkling, but something more serious, more saline, more compellingly aged.

But the county's most exciting recent development is the emergence of Exton Park, Black Chalk, and Hattingley Valley as producers of world-class quality. Exton Park's Blanc de Blancs, made by Corinne Seely from chalk vineyards above the Meon Valley, is one of England's most discussed wines among serious collectors. Black Chalk's Wild Rosé, impossibly pale and arrestingly precise, has developed a cult following in London's best restaurants. And Hattingley Valley's Kings Cuvée, Emma Rice's prestige cuvée, demonstrates what Hampshire chalk can deliver when the winemaker is sufficiently ambitious and patient.

The county also hosts the Isle of Wight's Rosemary Vineyard, technically a separate jurisdiction but enologically part of Hampshire's wine story. England's largest single vineyard by acreage, its wines are workmanlike rather than inspiring, but the setting — rolling downland above the Solent — is among England's most beautiful.

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