An award-winning vineyard near Swindon

has a new reason to celebrate, and just

the right sparkling wine to mark the

occasion, as SUE BRADLEY

discovers

THE French have their Champagne, the Italians Prosecco and the Spanish Cava — yet until now there’s been no generic name for the high quality sparkling wine produced in England.

This has changed with the move by Poulton Hill Estate to trademark the word Bulari, a variation of the Latin bullarum, which means bubbles, to describe the drink.

The vineyard near Swindon will using Bulari on its own bottles of sparkling white and rosé wines and allowing other producers a licence to use the name if they comply with the same strict production criteria that it uses.

Vineyard manager Tiléri Charles-Jones says the search for a suitable name for English sparkling wine wasn’t easy, and that several other words were considered and rejected.

“The Americans call it ‘Brit Fizz’, but we weren’t keen on that, and the Welsh ‘Swigod’ didn’t really work for us,” she laughs.

“Latin has been absorbed into lots of different European languages, and with the Cirencester area’s connection with the Romans, we thought ‘Bulari’ would be an apt choice.”

Poulton Hill Estate was founded in 2010 and fulfilled a long-held dream for its owner, businessman Max Thomas.

The vineyard covers seven acres (three hectares) of sunny, south-facing slopes and its clay loam soil is planted with 8,800 grape vines, including white varieties such as Bacchus, Seyval Blanc and Phoenix and the red Pinot Noir, Regent and Rondo.

Poulton Hill Estate produced its first vintage in October 2012 and now makes up to 20,000 bottles a year from its hand-harvested grapes.

Its Cotswold sparkling wine 2012 netted a host of awards, including bronze medals from the South West Vineyards Assocaiton and the UK Vineyards Association English and Welsh Wine of the Year Competition 2015 and 2016. It also won the sparkling wine, over £10 category, at the Quality Drinks Awards of 2016.

Mr Thomas, the chairman of the Watermark village in South Cerney, has ambitious plans for Bulari.

“We hope the new registered name will gather momentum within the English wine industry and become the generic name for English sparkling wine,” he says.

“We’d like Bulari to become as widely used as the terms Champagne and Prosecco are to French and Italian producers and Cava is to Spain.”

People in the UK have long associated the development of sparkling wines with the Champagne region of France, although the process involved in producing the fizz was actually first recorded by the English physician and scientist Dr Christopher Merret, who was born in 1614 and lived in the Gloucestershire town of Winchcombe, just 24 miles from Poulton.

He noted how still wines could be transformed as a result of a second fermentation process that produces an increase in temperature and carbon dioxide – the bubbles - when sugar and molasses is added to bottled alcohol.

Merret first recorded the recipe 20 years before the French Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Pérignon, who claimed to have invented the process. He was also the first to use thicker bottles after noticing how ones made from thinner glass were liable to explode when turned.

Tiléri says Poulton Hill Estate is proud to join other UK vineyards in continuing the English sparkling wine tradition and that this year looks set for a bountiful harvest of quality grapes, now that they have recovered from the frost in April.

Picking will be under way from the end of September and into October, with the fruit being carefully checked for quality before being sent to the Three Choirs Vineyard in Newent to be pressed and undergo an initial fermentation.

Currently she and her team are busy thinning canopies to increase air flow and reduce the threat of disease such as downy mildew, and ensure that the grapes get good exposure to the sun to help them ripen.

“Despite the frost damage, we’re confident of a good crop this year, the grapes are looking good,” explains Tiléri, who went to school in Gloucestershire and previously worked at vineyards in Australia.

“The conditions here are vastly improved for growing the grapes used in sparkling wine, especially as the climate has been warming in recent years.

“Modern English sparkling wines came to prominence in the last 20 or so years, with the Nyetimber vineyard in West Sussex leading the way and releasing its first bottles in 1997, and are now made by several vineyards across the UK.”

Along with its sparkling and still wines, Poulton Hill Estate produces its own spirits, including Cotswold Brandy made from grapes harvested in 2013 and then triple distilled and aged in American oak casks.

Its Sloe de Vie is made from local, hand-picked sloes that followed the 2015 grape harvest. Once fermented, the fruit was triple distilled and then bottled, which preserved its delicate aromas and freshness.

Tiléri and her team of four are expecting a busy few weeks ahead but she says all the effort it worthwhile.

“Looking after a vineyard is hard work but we are getting noticed now and that kind of endorsement means a lot to us,” she says.

  •  Poulton Hill Estate offers tours and tastings on site, on a by appointment basis only, between June and September. Visit poultonhillestate.co.uk.