English vineyard launches white wine aimed at Chardonnay haters

Kinsbrook Vineyard in Sussex has announced the launch of a new multi-vintage Chardonnay which aims to win over the variety's detractors. Called 'Anything But Chardonnay', or 'ABC' for short, the wine's name is a nod to a mantra which has gained popularity among certain wine drinkers. "Chardonnay gets a lot of hate for a few key reasons, and it mostly boils down to overexposure, style preferences, and people having bad experiences with cheap versions," Kinsbrook Vineyard's creative & marketing director and co-owner Rebecca Dancer shares with the drinks business. "Chardonnay boomed in the 80s and 90s, which led to many producers pumping out extremely heavily-oaked, New World Chardonnays which many wine drinkers became sick of due to over-saturation." However, Dancer believes that this is an unfair assessment: "As a grape variety, Chardonnay is extremely neutral and versatile – it's known as a 'blank canvas' variety in winemaking terms, which means it is a chameleon and will express itself differently depending on its treatment in the winery. For example, it can be crisp and minerally like a Chablis from France or big and buttery like a classic California style. As a result, someone who hates one style might unknowingly love another but still say: 'I hate Chardonnay'." "We chose to reference the ‘ABC’ crowd on the label as a bit of light fun; this wine is from our Kith range, which is a range in which we can play with ideas and concepts and nothing is designed to be taken too seriously," continues Dancer. "We know that this wine will divide consumers and those who are staunchly opposed to Chardonnay may not like it. This wine is an English Chardonnay which lends it a certain zippiness and lightness that the heavily-oaked New World Chardonnay are unable to achieve. This, we hope, might be enough to convert some wine drinkers who always associate Chardonnay with these extremely full-bodied versions."

Winemaking

The Chardonnay vines are planted on the heavy clay of Kinsbrook's vineyard in Thakeham, West Sussex. Dancer claims that this soil type helps to "achieve greater ripeness in our fruit overall". "This means our still wines often have more tropical fruit phenolics in them and are well suited to winemaking techniques, such as malolactic fermentation," she adds. Kinsbrook already produces another still Chardonnay (RRP: £26), which is unoaked, however, the ABC (RRP: £32) is the first of Kinsbrook's wines to see wood, spending 13 months in reconditioned French oak. "Chardonnay felt like a good place to start on our oaking journey," says Dancer, "but we're very much open to using this technique for future wines too." Also, and perhaps more strikingly, it is Kinsbrook Vineyard's first multi-vintage wine, made using a mixture of two harvests. "It was made using Chardonnay from our 2023 and 2022 harvests. ABC contains 40% from 2023 and 60% from 2022. We chose to oak the 2022 Chardonnay because it was an exceptionally ripe, high quality vintage and we then decided to blend this with a portion of unoaked Chardonnay from the following vintage to balance it out and add further complexity."

Tasting notes

The wine's label features a depiction of a bag of popcorn, which Dancer shares is because that was one of the most prominent flavours when the barrel sample was tried. "When we first tasted this wine directly from the barrel in the winery, it immediately conjured up the memory of freshly-toasted, buttered popcorn. This is one of the official tasting notes that we list on the wine label and it felt only right to mirror this through the label design itself." Although popcorn could well make for an interesting pairing, Dancer says that it will complement a "creamy, rich, nutty dish" especially well. "Currently on the menu in our restaurant at Kinsbrook Farmhouse, we have a sea bream dish which is pretty stunning when paired with this wine. The fish is served with roasted celeriac, a creamy truffle sauce and tempura anchovies which all bring out the bold flavours in the wine."