Bride Valley Vineyard

In 1976, a wine merchant called Steven Spurrier organised a tasting in Paris at which French judges, in blind conditions, rated California's finest Chardonnays and Cabernets ahead of the great wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy. The result became known as the Judgement of Paris, it changed the wine world's understanding of itself, and it made Spurrier simultaneously famous and not entirely popular with French vignerons. Thirty years later, the same man planted vines in a Dorset valley near Litton Cheney and began making English sparkling wine. The fact that this seemed entirely consistent with his character is the best possible endorsement of what the Bride Valley project represents.

Spurrier was not a man who planted vines to make a point, though points were occasionally made by association. He planted at Bride Valley in 2009 because he and his wife Bella believed in the potential of Dorset chalk for sparkling wine, and because the Bride Valley itself, a quiet limestone and chalk river valley above Bridport, provided the conditions they wanted. The Blanc de Blancs became the estate's calling card: a pure Chardonnay from chalk and limestone soils that Spurrier described as the wine that perfectly expresses the chalky soil and cool climate. It is a wine with the directness and confidence of someone who has spent a career tasting the world's finest wines and knows exactly what he is looking for.

Spurrier died in 2021, and in September 2023 the vineyard was sold to Alasdair Warren and Mark Banham, beginning a new chapter. The wines continue under the Bride Valley label, with the Blanc de Blancs retaining its status as the flagship cuvée and the still Pinot Noir, particularly strong in the 2018 vintage that produced exceptional fruit across southern England, showing that Dorset can produce compelling red wine as well as sparkling. The transition of ownership makes Bride Valley a particularly interesting estate to follow over the next several vintages: what remains of a founding vision when the founder is no longer present is one of the most illuminating questions in the English wine story.

The valley setting is one of the quietest and most beautiful in Dorset, the kind of place that makes visitors understand immediately why someone would choose to plant vines rather than do anything else with the land. Visits are by arrangement rather than regular open hours, and the wines are available online and through specialist retailers.