English Sparkling Wine: Winemaker Marcus Rayner-Ward of Wiston Estate

I just think it's really exciting to be part of that new exciting industry that is learning at a rapid pace and watch out because there's so many people coming that are making really exciting wines but what sets Whiston apart from everyone is the fact that we're family-owned, we're here to learn, understand and make quality sparkling wines. Hey this is Harman Skarnik and welcome to another episode of Skarnik Unfiltered. Today I have with me none other than Des Russo who is our portfolio ambassador for all things around the world. Today we're going to be focused in on one country, England. Yes. The bastion of quality wine for centuries. No wait a second that's not actually accurate. Actually you know years and years ago I don't think people would take a wine that's being produced in England very seriously but they are now particularly in southern England where some of these really good sparkling wines are being made and there are two major reasons for that I would say. One is the climate has changed. England is becoming a little bit more hospitable to grape growing when in the past the climate was just completely inhospitable and secondly you have the terroir and the soils which are a direct line across the channel to Champagne and they have a very very similar Kimmeridgian and chalky soils to that of Champagne 100 percent. We obviously think of English sparkling wine to be you know relatively new but as it goes for Europe wherever the Romans went they also brought vineyards so the Romans actually did plant vineyards in England. Viticulture has always been in England ever since then but when you have the Norman aristocracy for instance in England wanting to drink they actually would just go to continental Europe. That being said there is a huge drinking culture in England but to give you an idea the Domesday book which was an English survey done by William the Conqueror I think it was like in 1086 surveyed 47 vineyards so we have documentation that vineyards did exist in the 11th century. When we see English sparkling wine really take over it's starting like in the 1960s and 70s obviously with the arrival of climate change we start to get a little bit more wine production it becomes even more serious like in the early 2000s and now you have some English sparkling wine houses that are found on the finest lists in the world but I think it's like really important to talk about where are we as you say we're in the southern part of England it's one of the most beautiful places everyone likes to think of England like it's humid drizzly cloudy but I remember this one time I was hiking through Devil's Dyke in Sussex with a colleague of mine and we were on a slope and it was like we should plant a vineyard here. Sun-trapped on a beautiful airflow and the thing is when it's sunny in England there's no other sunshine like it in the world. You know this because you lived there for many years right? Yeah I lived there for seven years and I came back to the U.S. for you Harman. Well we're happy to have you. So you sat down with Marcus Rainer Ward who is the winemaker for Whiston Estate. Correct yes. And who is Megan his wife is she involved in the estate as well? Yep she's his assistant winemaker. Ah that's a winemaking couple. Yes they're making the wines for the Goring family. I remember tasting through a number of different producers of English sparkling wine that we rejected and I think Whiston stood out qualitatively you know we do a lot of champagne business we taste a lot of champagne and we were really really impressed with the quality that Whiston is producing so they became our first and they continue to be our only sparkling wine producer from England. That's correct. I remember us tasting Whiston deciding when the brand should be brought on to us. There is such a quintessential aroma and flavor profile that just takes you back to being in England. I think for me what makes the Whiston wines in particular so special is because there's this like fine-boned minerality that you find is a common thread in all of the wines. There's obviously an explosive amount of green apple but there's also a little bit of that elderflower almost like gooseberry thing that you find in the wines and that to me is just they're so quintessentially English. They really speak of where they're from and we've talked about this chalk that rises like if you have never seen the picture of the seven sisters on the south coast of England it's literally this fortress of chalk that rises out of the water. It is one of the most impressive things. I'll have to put that on my bucket list. I have not seen that. We should go hiking. It's great. We shall when we go visit Whiston. Yes. In any case let's go to your conversation with Marcus and learn more about Whiston Estate and what makes the wine so good. Let's do it. Hi Des, thanks very much for having me. I'm Marcus Reina-Ward. I'm the winemaker at Whiston Estate Winery in the UK. Really really excited to be partnered with you guys as our New York distributor. Amazing. First of all let's start off with your first impressions of New York. What did you think? It's amazing. It's my first time here. Oh my gosh. I've definitely got the stereotypical crick neck from staring up at everything. That's awesome. Yeah and just all little things that you know you see as a kind of tourist like it's great to see the yellow cabs and the steam coming out of the streets. Amazing. Yeah no for sure. I mean New York even if you spend a couple years away it still is impressive to see these like huge buildings and just the energy of the city. But where you're from is kind of the opposite of that. You're at Whiston. Where is Whiston in the UK? So we're based pretty much directly south of London. About an hour and a half train journey south of London and about five miles from the coast just outside a little town called Worthing. And what is Worthing like? Is it in the South Downs? Is it like what would be considered the South Downs? So you can see the South Downs from the seafront. It's a very lovely old kind of before global air travel what used to be kind of a very popular English seaside holiday destination. So it's got a lovely pier. It's got a nice seafront. Some lovely little shops. A lovely old cinema and a bandstand. Oh my gosh that sounds idyllic. Very like you know the opposite of New York. And what is the meaning of Whiston behind the estate? So Whiston itself currently sits as a 6,000 acre farming estate. It's owned by the Goring family. They've been there since 1743. They actually married into it. So they lived across the road and the Fagg family who lived in Goring House. Charlotte Fagg was actually betrothed to someone else and he got very excited about this arranged marriage and he started showing off before the wedding. Look at what I'm going to inherit. This is all going to be mine. And she overheard this and didn't really like that so she went to her mum and dad and said this isn't okay like I'm not down with this. So her parents were like okay that's not happening then so why don't you choose someone else? So she chose John Goring across the road and that's how the Goring family came to and they've been caring and stewarding for the land and farming ever since. Amazing. When did viticulture start to come into play in the estate? So that was in the 70s was the first idea really. So Harry before he took over from his father he did a bit of a gap year in South Africa and he fell in love out there and met Pip, married her and brought her back to the UK and she came back basically with weather not too dissimilar to what we have this week. And she thought this is great. England's fantastic. And then the week later the England showed up and it was pretty rainy and she got pretty homesick pretty quick. So she asked if she could plant a vineyard in 1973 and basically everyone said no that's a ridiculous idea you can't do this. So she kept persisting she sort of had 30 years of persisting and six children and eventually she got her dream right. So they planted a vineyard in 2006, a 16 acre site and they paid for it all by selling a dairy, the herd and all the equipment and were able to plant the site. And was the intention always to start off with sparkling wine or was it going to be starting with still wine? I think I mean Pip's dream has always been to release a still Chardonnay from South Africa but it was very much with the mind because of the fantastic chalk soils that we have and the climate the focus is on premium quality sparkling wine. Okay I think a lot of folks probably don't think of England as being a wine producing country. Tell me about the viticultural history of England. So it really dates back to Roman times where the climate was a little warmer and certainly there's an ancient hill fort on the estate called Chantimere ring and there's actually one a bit further down the road called Sisbury ring and there's very much evidence of vineyards being planted around Sisbury ring and actually on our labels here on the vintage label all the artwork here is lifted directly from the artwork around the fireplace in the great hall of western house. That's so cool. And if you look there's grapes. So this plaster work was done in the 1800s. Wow. So it's a direct kind of representation of what the estate has farmed in the past. So there was definitely grapes that were farmed there during Roman times. We went through a bit of an ice age and then it gets a bit warmer so into the 70s people start planting German varietals really. Right. That's the big influence is German varietals and it's not really until the 90s where people start engaging more with champagne and start looking at Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay. What inspired people to start making sparkling wine? Is it because the soil goes under the English Channel and then it rises and you see these dramatic you know the cliffs of Dover which I think lack of a better word looks like a natural fortress. I think it's just utterly breathtaking. Is that what defines English sparkling wine? Certainly yes for us I would say in the South Downs you know we very much have that same band of chalk that runs across the south coast dips under the channel. Obviously you see it beautifully as you mentioned with the fortress like cliffs of Dover goes into the channel and pops up again in the Cote de Blanc. So we very much have the same soils as that and then the increased slight inclinement as well. So the ability to actually suddenly ripen those grapes really really drove forward the thoughts of sparkling wine. Yeah for sure I mean English sparkling wine to me it's something quite youthful it has this almost like expression of elderflower a little bit more citrus they're definitely like more bright which I absolutely love about them but a little bit more about you though. You studied film at some point and then you ended up at Plumpton College is that correct? Correct yeah yeah so I started life in the film industry and that was great fun but then 2008 happened you know big problem lack of funding yeah I ended up running a pub in London near where I lived which I enjoyed to a certain extent but the late nights weren't for me yeah but I got to do WSET courses which I loved through that and then I went to New Zealand for four months to do a harvest in Hawke's Bay and really fell in love with winemaking and the process of it all. Oh that's so cool. So I came back I did a bit of wine sales for a while with a couple of big national retailers then a couple of small independent retailers but I really missed making something you know it's like the the film days of actually putting something together. Yeah. So I went to Plumpton studied for three years Bachelor of Science degree and I basically got the job at straight off the bat there. Wow that's awesome. Yeah just before I handed in my final project I went for the interview so I did an all-nighter finishing that off. Who hasn't pulled an all-nighter? And luckily it obviously worked because I turned up absolutely shattered. That's awesome and so with Whiston like what is your personal style that you're trying to impart in making wines? I know your wife is also the assistant winemaker for you is that correct? Correct yeah yeah. So she's driving the whole project and you're like I'm here for the ride. She's obviously the boss we get paid to fantasize I'm the boss but no she's with um no yeah so we worked together so we met at Plumpton we weren't together then we were with other people and we studied together and worked together in another vineyard in a very kind of basic small vineyard I mean so basic we're talking no canopy equipment it was just handheld yeah shears uh no running water no facilities anything so when I got the job at Whiston I was very lucky that the guy ahead of me the assistant winemaker left within about the first five weeks and Dermot said the job is yours if you want it so I had to very quickly backfill my position which basically when I started I was box making, disgorging, labeling, riddling and that was kind of all I was doing and even as assistant winemaker to start with that would be my main role and then I would just spend all my free time in the winery with Dermot absorbing everything I could and learning and then like how do you divide your responsibilities with your wife in the winery so it was very easy to start with because I was in the winery with Dermot and she ended up running the whole kind of post-production side of the business wow cool so that was her job and then when Dermot left and and and him and the family very kindly offered me the job of head winemaker I know Meg's passion lies in wine and not in the production side so I kind of pulled her across into the winery and she's really kind of made the role her own in terms of she's got a real passion for science and laboratory work and investigation so she's been really responsible for massively professionalizing that side of our business and allowing us to get real-time data on all that which is hugely important for traceability and for sparkling wine with these massive variations of ripeness and all of the parameters to have a sort of hold on that to help drive decision making how have the wines changed from like when you started to now and then what are you looking forward to in the future do you have any like cool projects are you working on any still wines what's going on so we have a great core range of wines that that Harry and Pip and Dermot kind of set up with their vision and and that's really what we you know we'll be tasting later is that kind of celebration of the Englishness of the wine you know certainly new vineyards have come online you know we started with 16 acres we're now 30 so we have new vineyards so we have a lot of the wines will naturally change as you play with different ages of vines and different ages of grapes okay and then we're looking really to maintain this but then you know can we experiment by looking at different plots seeing what the land does really dividing those small plots up to investigate that more and then yes we have a restaurant now so we have an opportunity to make these still wines a very small volume so that's really cool so I make a red my wife she makes the white and then we actually come together to make a small amount of still rosé as well nice okay well speaking of tasting wine let's jump in and let's start off with some Brut cool yeah let's start with our Brut non-vintage we make non-vintage wines every year these wines are made up of wiston fruit and some purchased fruit as well we do contract winemaking at wiston okay and we have partners that we've been working with the last 15 years okay and so we know the quality of their parcels of fruit so we able to grab a few little parcels here and there that really enrich these wines and then the Mernier for this and the rosé comes from a partner growing Kent so obviously we on this fantastic chalk bedrock which offers fantastic purity an amazing drive for our Mernier is a little skinny on chalk so we have a grower in Kent where the soil is very very clay rich so it gives a little bit more base notes to the wine that we want for these wines that are going to be released a little earlier cool let's try it feels alive in your mouth yeah it really does you've got Chardonnay you've got Mernier in here as well and Pinot Noir so every great variety is a third a third a third so each great variety gets its own soapbox to shout from yeah and then we use a reserve wine for our non-vintages obviously to make up that multi-vintage aspect so I have a perpetual solera tank oh cool in the winery which has wines dating back to 2008 you were just about to answer my question I was like how far does it go back that's really cool you really feel the heart of the brute non-vintage as just being this really beautiful concentration of fruit and flowers and almost that chalky saltiness that you get it's delicious okay let's go with the rosé okay so our rosé non-vintage we usually keep around 20 to 30 percent Chardonnay in this okay just to keep it fresh just to keep it on the right side we make a red wine from a state fruit every year to color so we do the color as assemblage rather than a sagnet and then tell me a little bit more about the lease agings with the non-vintage so I'd say the rosé is the one that we perhaps have a program for so we want that to remain quite fresh whereas everything else really is ready when it's ready the base of this route on vintage is 2018 whereas this is 2020 because of the contract winemaking side of our business that buys us time it keeps the accountants away from the door a little bit some of our competitors or peers they're having to release their vintage wines of 2018 whereas you know we can hold on to those non-vintages a little longer so we don't do any acid correction in the winery everything is fully non-malo these wines are both 100% tank fermented and tank made but that malic acid presence really allows the wines to develop an age and it's almost like a tightrope or bullet train that fires through the wine on its journey and allows all these flavor compounds to get on the train if you like but not overtake the wine and not give it any kind of flabbiness yeah you mentioned um reserve wines that you use how's the reserve wine situation going in england especially with the demand for english sparkling wine can it keep up like what's the future of it uh so we had a really fantastic bumper years in 18 and 23 so actually i would say the non-vintage wines coming out of certainly whistler and i can't speak for others but it's going to be like 60 reserve wine but we have had these bumper years and i think we'll probably continue to get these sporadic bumper years where we have the opportunity to hold back and keep hold of a lot of reserve wine if need be okay yeah that's awesome let's go and try the 2016 we're moving up into the vintage categories now so vintage at whistler means that everything is pressed in our cock out press so we have a 52 year old wooden basket press which was taken from a vineyard in champagne what taken is bought it's a fantastic piece of kit it is not a museum piece it's very much a key part of what we do at wiston it's so gentle so it liberates the juice under the least amount of duress which then gravity flows into the tank or below for a very gentle settling before heading off for fermentation so all our vintage wines are fermented in barrel so these are all third fill and more x burgundy barrels or whatever i can get my hands on basically choosing one of these three you really can't have which of the three would be if it would be the vintage i love the vintage wines don't get me wrong because they represent a time and a place we don't put a heavy winemaking stamp on our wines we want to really do justice to the guys and their work in the vineyard every year yes i love the vintage wines because of that but i think for me it's generally this wine because i think it just delivers for what it is it's england in a glass it's got the complexity and depth and structure and i think it's a beautiful showcase for wiston as a concept as a philosophy england in a glass i think is like the perfect way to describe the brute non-vintage from living in the uk i always say there's no other place in the world where the sun is so glorious when it's shining in the uk and it's not because but there is something so magical and something really beautiful about that light and i think the brute really captures that it's so nimble it dances it's got this beautiful acid these gorgeous flowers and elderflower is like the one thing that always makes me think of like anything english yeah and i get that with the brute and it's just delicious where is england going to go from here what is going to be that special moment for england for people in the united states to grab on and just run with it and really see the potential it's just such an exciting industry right we're still so new yeah and we're still kind of yeah searching and finding exactly what we're about you know there is a still wine popularity now you know we're also just sort of finding our zones right so still wine is kind of becoming popular from essex an area called the crouch valley that's the first area which you would probably call a wine area where you can look down a valley and see lots of different vineyards because every other winery is very isolated and all the vineyards are very isolated you know you've got english sparkling wine is made from kent to cornwall and you know that's a six hour seven hour drive i just think it's really exciting to be part of that new exciting industry that is learning at a rapid pace and watch out because there's so many people coming that are making really exciting wines but what sets wiston apart from everyone is the fact that we're family owned we're not trying to escalate and grow massively the family have owned the place for 200 years they want to earn it in the next 200 years so we're not trying to build an asset sheet we're here to learn understand and make quality sparkling wines amazing well marcus thank you so much for your time and it's great to have you part of our portfolio at skirnick oh it's fantastic to be skirnick unfiltered is recorded at skirnick wines and spirits headquarters in the flat iron district of new york city if you found the conversation interesting please consider liking subscribing and leaving a review you can stay up to date on our show and upcoming events by following skirnick wines on instagram and visiting our website at skirnick.com