Plumpton Estate wins gold

Plumpton College are delighted to announce they have won a Gold medal for the fourth time in the world’s most prestigious sparkling wine competition. Plumpton Estate NV Brut Rosé is one of only 116 Gold medals that have been awarded in this year’s competition to 18 different countries. 

 Sarah Midgley, Plumpton’s winemaker commented 

We are over the moon to win a Gold for the fourth time. We work extremely hard every year to ensure quality and consistency are delivered in all our wines. However the key difference with our wines, is that the vine-growing and winemaking is carried out almost entirely by our undergraduate students. You can almost taste their enthusiasm for tending the vines, managing the fermentations and agreeing the blends! I am very proud of all our students. 

The Dean Blush is a traditional-method sparkling wines made from Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier grapes grown entirely at Plumpton College in East Sussex. 

The College vineyards are located near Haywards Heath in the heart of Sussex, and, thanks to their exceptional site and the loving care that they receive, produce outstanding wines.

All the wines submitted for the Champagne and Sparkling Wine World Championship (CSWWC) are judged blind exclusively by three internationally renowned fizz experts, Tom Stevenson, Essi Avellan MW and Dr Tony Jordan and according to the judges 2018 has been the toughest judging yet with the quality and diversity of sparkling wine improving year on year.

Tom Stevenson, Founder and Chairman of the Judges commented

With the spread of technology and expertise world class sparkling can now be found in countries where the fizz was undrinkable or non-existent 10 years ago. While France and Italy remain the two most important countries in terms of their number of entries, the increase in entries from the USA, UK, Austria, Brazil, Chile, Hungary and South Africa has averaged in excess of 75%. In the USA we saw first time entries from Virginia and Illinois.

The Best in Class, National Champions and World Champions by Style will be revealed at this year’s CSWWC Awards Dinner at Merchant Taylor’s Hall in London on 24^th October. Fingers crossed Plumpton can go all the way!