Hundred Hills Preamble No.2

Great wines are made in vineyards, not in wineries, and from grapes that can slowly grow and ripen in the cool climates that allow them the time to express the hundreds of delicate aromas and flavours that ultimately deliver the fine wines we love.

From the outset Hundred Hills have focused on the low yielding, high quality forms of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay that have produced so many great wines in Burgundy and Champagne during the twentieth century. Now it’s the steep chalk slopes paired with the climate of Southern England to prove what it can do in the twenty-first.

Fine wines require grapes have the ‘hang time’ on the vine to develop all the complex aromas and flavours before the sugar levels get too high – here in Oxfordshire, it’s more than one hundred days, hence Hundred Hills.

Preamble No. 2 is a generous expression from the warm 2018 vintage and an excellent introduction to Hundred Hills. The base wines were created without malolactic fermentation to preserve their acidity, fermented and aged in a mix of oak and stainless steel, and then kept for 36 months on lees.

Rich aromas of juicy pears and cooked quince give way to a soft, luxuriant mousse with ripe stone fruits, orange blossom and hints of almond patisserie. This is a wine that captures in the glass all the complex flavours and aromas they seek in the vineyard on those final days of harvest.