HM Queen Elizabeth 11’s Platinum Jubilee.
Corney & Barrow, one of the oldest independent wine merchants of the UK was established in 1780. They have stocked Breaky Bottom for over four years. Their Royal Warrants date back to George V in 1912, when they were first introduced. After the sad death of HM Queen Elizabeth this will pass to HM King Charles and to HRH William Prince of Wales. Earlier in the year C&B chose the Breaky Bottom 2014 vintage to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, a great honour! They ordered 1952 individually numbered bottles, to acknowledge the year she came to the throne.
The Real Review
Anthony Rose lists Breaky Bottom at No.1 of his top twenty wineries of GB for The Real Review 2022 . www.therealreview.com/wine-regions/gb/top-wineries/2022 - It’s a fine tribute, and I send him my thanks following our enjoyable in-depth five-hour tasting session! This link should take you to his detailed comments on each wine. www.therealreview.com/wineries/31847/scorecard - Lars Herold (Chief Executive Officer) and Terence Ling (Executive Director) of The Real Review flew over from Australia last week and visited Breaky Bottom. We spent much of the day tasting wines on my current list, focusing particularly on the value of vertical assessment of each vintage (2010 -2017). I found their astute descriptors of each wine very instructive.
The 2022 Harvest
One of the many decisions a winemaker has to make is ‘when to pick’ – I like to wait to get full ripeness, but it can be risky. Today (21st September) I have made a detailed inspection of the crop; a visual assessment shows clean grapes with no real sign of botrytis; tasting the grapes at random gives an idea of general mouthfeel, the sweetness against acidity; measuring the actual sugar levels with my refractometer signals more accurately the ripening, and similar testing in a week from now will measure its progress. I’m a bird lover and enjoy feeding them in my Three-Star Michelin restaurant, but I accept that they also like grapes and I’m flying my hawk-like balloon to pretend I’m a hungry raptor! Harvest will be in early/mid-October.