Christ Church has commissioned an English sparkling wine from the Hundred Hills vineyard in Oxfordshire. Hundred Hills is a very exciting newcomer to the English wine scene: their first vintage was 2016 and we shall be using wines from their 2018 vintage, a spectacular harvest for English wine.

More than a decade has gone into getting the wine perfect for release. Owners Steven and Fiona Duckett recall that when they first sent off samples from their Stonor Valley sites, the Montpellier lab asked from which part of the Côte des Blancs they were taken. Their winemaking has taken its cue from Frank Mazy, who is also advising Taittinger’s Domaine Evremond in Kent, Dr Michel Salgues of Champagne Roederer and Prof Pierre-Marie Guillaume of University of Montpellier.
 
Every care has been made to make the vineyard and the winery environmentally sustainable and geared towards fantastic wines, and the results speak for themselves. The tasting team found the wines to match the quality of our favourite sparkling wines. The whites were seductive and aromatic and the rosé was hardly like a rosé Champagne at all and more like a very fine Provençal rosé with a delicate mousse.

To find out more, visit https://hundredhills.wine/ or see this article from the drinks business “Is this England’s most select wine estate?”
 
The House has had an input into the blending and dosage process from Hundred Hills’ top wines, alongside their experts. Therefore, when we say it’s our wine, it really is bespoke, unique, and from the best ingredients we could find in this Country.
 
Due to the long ageing the wine will have undergone, the earliest it will be available is September of this year, just in time to celebrate Christ Church’s ‘40 Years of Women’. However, we will also lay down a quantity of the cuvée in order to mark the Quincentenary that we will be celebrating in 2025, in order to serve the wine at festivities throughout that year.