Buy Court Garden Wines online from Great Wines Direct
Court Garden estate was created by Howard and Jenny Corney in 2005. With Howard leading vineyard tours and his son Hugo crafting the wines, the company is truly a family affair.
At Ditchling in East Sussex, in the lea of the South Downs, where the geology is the same as Champagne and the chalk of the Downs goes all the way down to Champagne, there are 17 acres of vines. However, the climate in Sussex is more maritime.
The estate was briefly acquired by the crown before being known as Court Garden since the lands of Lewes Priory were taken under the monastic dissolution.
Hugo produces a variety of excellent sparkling wines that are all hand-crafted using the Traditional Method and aged for a long time in bottles. In addition to the common champagne grape varieties of Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay, they also grow the historically rare Arbanne and Petit Meslier as well as the early-ripening Pinot Précose.
Their magnificent Court Garden Ditching Reserve [formerly known as Quartet] has a sizeable amount of barrel-aged wines. Additionally grown for a line of still wines include Rondo, Pinot Gris, Ortega, and Pinot Blanc. John Vernon Lord, who created the pictures for Aesop's Fables among other things, created the elaborate artwork on their labels. He is well known for detesting wasps and resides in the village of Ditchling.
The sheep indicates that the estate is a working sheep farm in addition to a vineyard on the collar label, which has a wasp on one end and a sheep on the other. Additionally, the sheep should cover the wasp, but as these labels are all manually applied, occasionally there are a few errors.
Court Garden wines have won multiple awards, including two renowned International Wine Challenge trophies, 50 Great Sparking Wines of the World gold medals, International Wine & Spirit Competition gold medals, UK Vineyards Association gold medals, and Sommelier Wine Awards gold medals!
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