Yes, we should be drinking English wines! - Joanne Maxwell, Section Chair
In a first for us, we devoted an entire evening to tasting English wines. In another first, our speaker, Alfie Smith, debuted as a presenter to a group of wine drinkers rather than his usual audience of wine buyers. Alfie, an engineer by profession, is the grandson of Charles and Petronella Humphreys, who took over Hazel End Farm in 1974 and soon thereafter planted vines for growing white grapes. The wines are sold under the Hazel End and Three Squirrels labels. Alfie shared with us his family’s history and the decisions that had been made over the years to produce the wines he brought for us to taste. Alfie and his brother are working with their grandfather to learn and grow the business and expect to take over “some day.” If they do, they have been given a very good head start to promote some lovely wines made in the south of England.
The Hazel End wines we tasted were:
SPARKING WHITES:
Stockyard Sparking Brut 2023 (£13.95) – Hazel End’s first sparking wine where the second fermentation occurs in a tank, not the bottle. Fresh and lively.
Three Squirrels Brut 2015 (£22.50) – This wine won a London Wine Competition Bronze medal in 2023. Delicious and very refreshing.
STILL WHITES:
Hazel End Triplet 2021 (£11.70) – A blend of Reichensteiner, Huxelrebe, and Muller Thurgau grapes.
Hazel End Treetops 2023 (£13.05) – a dry white wine with hints of fruit and spice.
Hudshill Bacchus 2023 (£14.85) – this wine is mostly made with the Bacchus grape
with 10% Huxelrebe in the blend.
RED WINES:
Hazel End doesn’t grow red grapes and its white wines are made by Shawsgate near Framlingham in Suffolk. Alfie brought along two Shawsgate Venus red wines, one a 2022 vintage and the other a 2024 vintage (both 13.49). We tasted both wines at the same time for a comparison of the two, with the 2022 vintage the clear favorite.
