Gusbourne, England’s leading wine estate, announced that the 2015 harvest exhibited all the hallmarks of a great vintage. Based on early analysis, the young base wines from this growing season have the optimum ratio of sugar and acidity. At fermentation stage, the wines are already showing a great balance and are beginning to exhibit some of the terroir notes that typify Gusbourne’s style, including red currants, floral notes and a saline minerality. Purity and intensity are further testimony to 2015 being a vintage to remember.
Andrew Weeber, founder, commented: “Tasting the base wines with the team early next year will be crucial to define the precise blend that will go into the vintage cuvées. Considering the great potential these 2015 wines are showing, we are excited about marrying this potential with prolonged lees ageing to enhance their unique balance and complexity.”
Lower than average temperatures in August and September this year meant that the harvest was a full two weeks later than normal. Warm days and cool nights in the weeks immediately preceding harvest saw sugars rise and acids fall to reach the perfect balance. Gusbourne believes a long growing season benefits the quality of the base wines, with the grapes exhibiting good phenolic maturity. With next to no disease pressure across their own vineyards in Kent and West Sussex, Gusbourne were able to leave the fruit to reach these optimum levels of maturity.
2015 has also been a landmark year for Gusbourne with the very first harvest from two new vineyards in West Sussex planted in 2013. These two sites are situated on chalk and flint (silex) soils, and although still at an early stage, the juice has shown great promise with a minerality and elegant structure that are the perfect complement to the full bodied, rounder, forward wines that typify the warmer clay-loam soils in Kent. Gusbourne believes this puts them in a very strong position to further enhance the final blend of the wines, bringing greater complexity, structure and a longer ageing potential.
Recently Gusbourne appeared in a Film on Handmade Vintage Sparkling Wines : Watch the Film (1h20mn) “The Path of Humility”
