Danbury Ridge: where thoughtful viticulture, a great climate and magical clays are helping to create England’s best still wines
Website: https://www.danburyridge.com/
Danbury Ridge has, in a short time, established a reputation for being the leading producer of still wines in the UK. They are based in the Crouch Valley of Essex, itself a region with a growing reputation. I’d tried a few of the wines and had been really impressed, so there was quite a bit of anticipation when I visited (with consultant John Atkinson and winemaker Liam Idzikowski) on a rainy Sunday afternoon. It was also nice to share the visit with a group from Château Mercian in Japan, a winery I know well. We had a great time: after walking around the vineyard dodging showers, we had a look at the winery, and then finished with an extensive tasting. This carried on during dinner, which included some single blind flights putting the Danbury wines in some rather smart company.
Why is the Crouch Valley getting a lot of attention? First of all, this is a warm, dry part of the south of England. With just 450 mm of rain a year, it could be problematic to dry-grow grapes here, even. But low evapotranspirative rate helps here. It’s also frost free, a massive advantage in a cool climate. The heat summation here is 1150 GDDs, which John says is where Burgundy was in the 1980s and 1990s. ‘Burgundy has a continental climate, and here it is maritime. Their phenology will be two weeks ahead of ours. By harvest the gap is 3-4 weeks. Botrytis isn’t an issue here so there is no panic to pick.’
Danbury ridge is owned by the Bunker family: Mike and Heather and their kids Jeanine and Sophie. Mike Bunker founded Global Asset Management (GAM) and was in the right place at the right time. He went to Hong Kong and made lots of money, and then came back to Essex. He’d bought some land and built a house there in 1988, but in 2014 he was convinced by others that this would be a good place to plant a vineyard.
So what is now the Octagon Block was planted in 2014. The Bunkers initially saw themselves as grape growers, but were blown away by a wine made from the first crop which caused them to change their course. In 2016 renowned winemaker Liam Idzikowski bought some Pinot Noir from here for Lyme Bay, where he was working. Liam had purchased the grapes for rosé but the fruit was so good he made a still Pinot Noir. The Bunkers tasted the wine and it changed their idea of what they thought was possible in this place. Thus Danbury ridge as it is today was born: an ambitious winery making high-end still wines of the sort never seen before in the UK. They hired Liam to make the wines. Debut vintage was 2018, made at Lyme Bay, but by 2019 they had a brand new winery that Liam had designed with high quality wine production in mind.
A short film of the visit:
The vineyards
The soil in the Crouch Valley is quite localized. ‘When you are doing viticulture here you have to be pretty attentive to vigour,’ says John. ‘But if you get it right and adjust your viticulture, you can get it to work.’ He says its’ rare to find people with the right dedication. The soils can change even over short distances.
There are four vineyards, with more on the way. The first-planted was the Octagon Block, with the first vines going into the ground in 2017, 2021 and 2024. This is five hectares and the soils vary. At the lower end we have a slab of London clay, and then elsewhere the clay is covered by a layer of gravelly loam, up to 2.5 m thick.
Next to this is the Polo Vineyard, consisting of a shallow loam layer over free-draining sand and gravel soils, 11 metres deep. There are 1.6 hectares here.
The third estate vineyard is the Sleipnir Block, which is loamy soil and a mix of London clay and chalky clay till. There are 5 hectares here, and it weas planted in 2017.
Then, near Purleigh, there’s the Spar Hill vineyard. London clay predominates. They purchased Chardonnay from this 7.4 hectare site for three years and then bought the vineyard in 2023.
There’s a new site, some farmland near Canewdon, purchased in Spring 2023. The draw here was the quality of the clay soils, and they are in the process of planting 6 hectares. But it’s a tricky site to establish vines on and the first planting attempt failed.
It’s all about the clay
John Atkinson gets very excited about clay. ‘I knew a bit about clay,’ he says, but recalls how the 2020 growing season led him to find out a lot more. This was the season where there was a lot of rain just before harvest. ‘There was 100 mm one Saturday, three weeks before harvest.’ He was expecting to see some dilution in the grapes, with the sugars going down, but the grapes continued to ripen. ‘We found the sugars had gone up,’ he says. ‘So I googled smectite clay and London clay.’
This is where it gets geeky. There are different sorts of clay, and the mineral content of the clay is key to determining its properties. Kaolinite clay is great for pottery and brick making because it doesn’t swell and shrink as it gets wet and then dries. But illite clay and smectite clay do, and this is very interesting for viticulture. Especially smectite clay that swells and shrinks the most. But this is a simplification: there’s often a mix of clays and it’s quite rare to get a pure form of one. But he looked through all the various surveys found some slabs of pure smectite clay, which has amazing shrink and swell capacity. ‘It’s very hard to establish a vineyard on smectite clay because you get such big cracks,’ he says. ‘You just have to be patient for vineyard establishment. With these soils you have to play a long game, but it is worthwhile.
Of the London clays, both illite and smectite are really good for Chardonnay. Smectite is great for Pinot Noir. ‘I think there are some chosen sites within a good area,’ says John. ‘There’s a reasonably large area you can plant [in the Crouch Valley]. The chosen sites are maybe 500 acres that are really good.’
‘Clay is really good. The suction you need to get water off these clays is extraordinary.’ This gives the vines a bit of stress. Of illite and smectite, the former is the hardest to get water out of. ‘You want to be on the side of water and nutrient stress,’ says John. ‘You need a bit of nitrogen stress in the grapes. Less so for Chardonnay, more for Pinot Noir.
We spent some time in the winery. It’s above ground but is very well insulated. It sits at 9 C in the winter and 17 C in the summer. Liam designed the winery, and the scale here is 10-12 000 cases per year, which will not get bigger.’ 35 hectares and 12 000 cases seems like the right size,’ says John.
Sparkling wine
The new development is the soon-to-be-released traditional method sparkling wine. There’s an interesting philosophy here, which is to get a lot of character in the base wine rather than focus on a long time on lees. ‘The evolution of English wines in bottle is much slower than in Champagne,’ says Liam. So they make their base wines in barrel and also have a perpetual reserve/solera for reserve wines, which began in 2018. ‘With chalk you get elegance,’ says Liam. ‘Here you don’t get salinity and minerality, and sparkling wines can get clunky on the clay. I don’t want to make something that’s just a nice wine. We don’t want to make a crowd pleaser. We want to make a still wine with bubbles.’ He adds, ‘I’ve always liked Selosse and Ulysses-Collin in Champagne. I walk the tightrope of oxidative and reductive.’
John says he has spent a lot of time looking at dosage. ‘The liqueur is quite complex,’ he says. He makes a Chardonnay in new oak with lots of sugar (500 g/litre) which comes out tasting like Pedro Ximenex sherry after 2 years in barrel. It brings in some tannin. They use this to get a dosage of 5 g/litre.
The final blend is 60% Pinot Noir, 30% Chardonnay and 10% Pinot Meunier, and the debut wine is based 60% on 2019, with 40% perpetual reserve from 2018-2020. It was bottled in August 2021.
Danbury Ridge Brut NV
Complex, taut and lively with lemon and cherry fruit as well as some nutty notes in the background. Complex with some nice mature notes but also real precision, with a lovely saline twist on the finish. Has a hint of orange peel and cherry, and it’s bright and expressive. 94/100
PINOT NOIR
Danbury Ridge Pinot Noir 2020
This was a really good year but there was a lot of rain just before harvest, which is when they realized there was something very interesting with the clay soils, because the grapes continued to ripen, rather than begin to get dilute. Beautifully expressive with some lovely cherry and blackberry fruit as well as some autumnal pot pourri characters, with lovely acidity and fine tannins. There’s concentration – even a hint of Piemonte here – with a little development that works really well. Concentrated fruit with mid-palate richness and then some lovely leaf litter and spice adding a savoury edge to the fruit. The finish is wonderful. 95/100
Danbury Ridge Pinot Noir 2021
This was a really cool year. Quite a few sparkling producers didn’t get through veraison. They finished picking on 10 November: there was no summer, and mean temperatures were 2 C below average in July and August. Lovely aromatics here: fresh, floral red cherries and redcurrant and some fine spices. Some savoury, spicy notes with silky red cherry and plum fruit, with real elegance on the palate: fine spices and a bit of tannin, finishing bright and with a long tapering finish. 94/100
Danbury Ridge Pinot Noir 2022
This has just been bottled. A contrast to 2021: a really warm year with 1300 growing degree days. In the Polo vineyard they got to 41.3 C. September dropped down to normal, with 30 mm of rain from September to October, but despite this they watered the vines. Concentrated, dense and vivid with powerful black cherry fruit with some raspberry. Intense and bold with good structure showing lovely fruit intensity. Grippy and intense, this will be amazing with a few years in bottle. And it should live a long time. 95/100
Danbury Ridge Octagon Block Pinot Noir 2022
Powerful and intense with some nice spicy notes, and bold cherry and raspberry fruit. There’s some nice grippy structure here, with notes of tar and spice in the background. Lively acidity. This is very fine. An astonishing wine. 96/100
CHARDONNAY
Danbury Ridge Octagon Block Chardonnay 2020
18 months in barrel. Complex and intense with bold pear and peach fruit, with some lovely spicy intensity. Some pineapple hints with nice acidity. Pronounced citrus character with amazing concentration, and a lovely acid line, finishing with fine toast and spice. Lovely intensity to this wine, with a long spicy finish. 94/100
Danbury Ridge Chardonnay 2021
Concentrated and intense with lovely spicy detail and a touch of nice reduction. Very expressive with lovely citrus drive. There’s a mineral energy here with great focus and purity. 94/100
Danbury Ridge Octagon Block Chardonnay 2022
In 2021 they didn’t make an Octagon, as it was needed for the estate. Concentration and intensity here with lovely weight to the powerful pear, citrus and peach fruit. There’s a fine spicy element and a brilliant acid line with real intensity and power. Such depth and purity: this is really fine with some crystalline acidity on the finish. 95/100
