English Wine Week & Wyken Pink

This week (22nd June) is the start of English Wine Week - a celebration of all things viticultural in England… And to celebrate we are delighted to announce the launch of our latest wine: Wyken Pink.

It has been 6 years since we last made a rosé, back in 2019. That popular wine was a much darker pink, made using a relatively unknown grape variety called Triomphe d’Alsace. Like many English vineyards, in the pioneering days when Wyken was planted - way back in 1988 - we experimented with grape varieties that we felt would stand the cold English climate. Triomphe d’Alsace was one of those, and we hoped to make a red wine from it initially. The grapes very rarely ripened enough to make a compelling red wine, but we quickly realised that a rosé was a possibility, and we made and sold this wine for over a decade.

Another issue with more esoteric varieties like Triomphe d’Alsace, is that the vines are rarely as long lived as their more noble, and well known, counterparts. And so, in 2020 with yields no longer justifying the labour to tend to the vines, we made the decision to pull up the Triomphe d’Alsace and replace it with Pinot Noir.

Pinot Noir is a notoriously challenging grape to grow, and it is just this season that we have anything approaching a crop. And with that crop, we have made a rosé. With think this new expression of Wyken Pink, much lighter than its predecessor, is full of sunshine, fragrant strawberries, a hint of pear drop, and the perfect antidote to the current heatwave. Do drop into Wyken and enjoy a glass sitting on our terrace, under the shade of one of our parasols, and enjoying the lambs playing in the field opposite: it is the very essence of an English Summer.

English wine making is rarely straightforward. You can read an article about some of its challenges, written by the owner of Wyken Vineyards, Sam Carlisle, on Scribehound, here.