After a rigorous retasting of all the vintages back to 2004, winemakers Owen and Fergus Elias selected the 2008 vintage to be disgorged and re-released as the inaugural wine in the Archive Collection
Balfour’s father-and-son winemaking team: Owen and Fergus Elias (r-l)
Balfour Brut Rosé is a wine of many firsts: it was one of the first English sparkling rosé wines (preceded only by Camel Valley’s Pinot Noir Rosé Brut), the first English wine ever to be served in British Airways first class cabins as well as the only English wine served at the London Olympics in 2012 – when the vines had been in the ground for just a decade. Now Balfour delivers another first: the first late-disgorged vintage release of an English sparkling rosé.
Now that the vines are 20 years old, owner and founder Richard Balfour-Lynn has launched his Archive Collection, starting with the late-disgorged 2008 vintage of Balfour Brut Rosé. In order to demonstrate the ageability of this wine, he held a vertical tasting in his latest restaurant, the Balfour at Bow Wine Vaults in the heart of the City. His wife Leslie was by his side, as were father and son winemaking team Owen and Fergus Elias and Stephen Skelton MW who planted the vines in 2002.
The courage to be “odd”
“When Leslie said to me 20-odd years ago why don’t we plant some vines, nobody drank any English wine – we were rather odd,” said Richard Balfour-Lynn as he opened the tasting. He has a point. A quick look at Wine GB’s statistics reveals that in 2002 – when the Balfour-Lynns planted their first wines at their Hush Heath Estate in Kent – there were just 812 ha of vines in the UK. By 2021, this had risen to 3,758 ha in 2021 – and is estimated with the new plantings of 2022 to have reached 5,000 ha by now – which is more than a five-fold increase in two decades.
The one-line business plan
“We wrote a one-line business plan: if we cannot sell it, we drink it – and to this day Leslie and I only allow wine out that we love,” Balfour-Lynn continues.
At the time, Balfour-Lynn already was a seasoned businessman and a smooth operator in both real estate and hospitality – of Malmaison and Hotel du Vin fame and also sometime-owner of the historic luxury department store Liberty’s of London. He could thus afford to follow his hunch. As it turns out, he also had a very clear idea of what he wanted to achieve.
“When we started 20 years ago, our plan was to make only one wine, a pink sparkling wine, and this is it – the Balfour Brut Rosé,” he said.
Better than Billecart-Salmon? The Elias team accepted the challenge
Father and son
Winemaker Owen Elias has also been a man of the first hour. He recounted how clear Balfour-Lynn’s idea actually was:
“When Richard came to me at Chapel Down where I was the winemaker, he asked me to make a sparkling rosé wine. He wanted it to be better than Billecart-Salmon.”
This elicited some laughter from the small audience – and a wry smile from Balfour-Lynn himself. Elias noted that there was a small harvest in 2003, the first year that the vines bore fruit. The first proper harvest was 2004 at a pre-set harvest date – arranged so that pickers could pick in one weekend rather than according to the optimal ripeness of the grapes which seems rather quaint now.
“All was pressed in one tank and made in one tank. It was a field assembly of roughly half Chardonnay, half Pinot Noir.”
Balfour Brut Rosé has always been a vintage-dated Pinot Noir-Chardonnay blend and has always been made without malo-lactic fermentation – a stylistic marker. By now, Owen has been joined by his son Fergus, a Plumpton graduate, in the winery. They are a great team – combining experience and experimentation in equal measure.
The Archive Collection
Balfour Brut Rosé has come a long way since then. Balfour-Lynn noted that the estate now has a portfolio of 27 wines.
“Our plan is to make ¾ of a million or a million bottles a year, we do not really want to get bigger, our raison d’être still is wine tourism. We are at a point in our lives where we want it to be fun.” He also pointed out that it was “incredibly interesting for us to taste how the wines have changed. Because sales are strong and production is still relatively low, most wines are not really given the opportunity to age, so it is very exciting to be doing this on our 20th anniversary.”
We then had the pleasure of tasting these first vintages of Balfour Brut Rosé from 2004, 2005 and 2006 – and now we understood what had moved Balfour-Lynn to another first: the first late-disgorged vintage release of an English sparkling rosé. The more formalised press release puts it succinctly: “After a rigorous retasting of all the vintages back to 2004, winemakers Owen and Fergus Elias selected the 2008 vintage to be disgorged and re-released as the inaugural wine in the Archive Collection.”
Collectors and wine lovers can look forward to further releases over the coming years.
An eye-opener
The late-disgorged Balfour Brut Rosé 2008 is an industry first
The tasting was eye-opening: the 2004 vintage shone and each wine had a distinct expression – the pinks had turned into copper hues and the juxtaposition of the 2008 vintage disgorged in 2010 and 2022 was a masterstroke. These wines can and should age. I fear they are hard to resist on release but this is a case of patience being rewarded.
Balfour Brut Rosé 2004 – disgorged 2008 with 8g/l dosage
Almost a rose gold, copper colour. An evolved nose has hints of dried slices of Dutch honey cake and notions of gingerbread. Notions of melted wax creep in with and edge-of-peppery spice. More air and temperature reveal hints of dried apple and maple syrup with spicy allure. The palate is wonderfully fruity on the palate, much less evolved, glowing with dried and baked apple, still bright with vivid lemony freshness, with hints of orange peel and rosehip tea. The finish rings with vivid freshness on a slender palate which still has subtle, creamy mousse.
Balfour Brut Rosé 2005 – disgorged 2009 with 8g/l dosage
A slightly honeyed nose shows fine notions of smoky beeswax and dried apple peel. The palate still has creamy mousse and comes with lemony concentration. It has brightness, freshness and verve, but is not as multi-dimensional as the 2004. A lovely waxiness joins the lemon on the aftertaste – a clean and lasting finish.
Balfour Brut Rosé 2006 – disgorged 2010 with 8g/l dosage
Pale copper colour. A very subtle note of dried orange peel peeps through first on the tender nose. Fresh, ripe apple flesh follows and a floral note of dried rose petal. The palate has a subtle, creamy mousse and there is much freshness on the palate, a vivid brightness. This is again followed by a mouth-watering , bright, lemon finish that still rings with zestiness.
Balfour Brut Rosé 2008 – disgorged 2010 with 12g/l dosage
A touch of creamy waxiness suggests age, accompanied by subtle notes of white field mushroom and overtones of truffle. Hints of zesty tangerine and tart orange peel present aromatic highlights. The palate also holds beautifully aromatic citrus fruit and comes across as surprisingly mellow and rounded for a wine that comes with so much freshness. Again, this is bright, vivid, beautiful with a rather complex and salty finish that recalls orange zest and white truffle.
Balfour Brut Rosé Archive Collection 2008 – disgorged August 2022 with 8g/l dosage
An immediately evocative nose suggest a combination of tart redcurrant and luscious blossom honey, a wonderful alignment of freshness and evolution, again with an overtone of truffle. More air introduces a note of lemony barley sugar, backed by a notion of wet chalk. The mousse is fine and creamy, gently fizzing away on a slender, bright, fresh body that holds all the aroma of citrus and honey. That note of tart redcurrant returns on the bright, long and layered finish. Lovely.
Balfour Brut Rosé 2010 – disgorged 2012 with 10g/l dosage
There’s almost a hint of caramel on the first whiff. This is soon followed by tender notions of dried blood orange peel. The palate has the beautiful fleshiness and mellow ripeness of a Red Delicious apple but with wonderfully bright freshness. In fact, the acidity is like a delicious, illuminative thread at the core of this fruity, balanced and lovely wine with much resonance.
Balfour Brut Rosé 2014 – disgorged 2018 with 8g/l dosage
A beautifully powdery nose seems to convey summer berries and ripe apple dusted in fresh pollen, suggesting cherry blossom freshness. Hints of ripe apple and fresh orange are accentuated by flashes of tangerine zest. The palate adds a lovely depth of chalk, a beautiful texture aided by that gentle mousse and equipped with a lovely and pleasant note of pithy bitterness that makes it all the more mouth-watering and destines this for the table. There is a wonderfully haunting sense of miso and umami on the finish.
Balfour Brut Rosé 2018 – disgorged 2022 with 6g/l dosage
A wonderfully bright, fresh note of ripe apple flesh, as juicy and fresh as Cox Orange Pippin, is pervaded by creaminess. The palate is fresh, bright, and wonderfully zesty with a creamy balance befitting this ripe and sunny vintage. The wine strikes a wonderful balance of brightness, creaminess and ripe fruit. If the older vintages here are anything to go by, this will be a marvel with a few years of bottle age – that is if you can resist.
