Tasting

In the glass, color shows first. Pale straw yellow in most cuvées, a delicate salmon tone as soon as Pinot Noir plays a part in a rosé. Fine bubbles should rise evenly and persistently – coarse, short-lived bubbles give away too short or too warm a fermentation.

Smell twice: once with the glass still, once after a gentle swirl. In the still glass, green apple, lemon, and sometimes a touch of blackcurrant from the Pinot Meunier component come through first. After swirling, the notes produced only by long lees aging follow: toasted bread, brioche, sometimes a hint of almond.

On the palate, acidity strikes first. It sits along the sides of the tongue and gets the saliva flowing. In a sparkling wine from the South Downs, it's usually more pronounced than in comparable wines from warmer sites, because the grapes here must be picked earlier just to reach ripeness at all.

The fine carbonation carries this acidity through the entire sip without the wine coming across as harsh. On the contrary, a fine, creamy mousse acts almost like a cushion beneath it. In a cuvée with a high Chardonnay share, the impression stays lean and linear; with more Pinot Noir, it becomes rounder and denser.

At the end, count how long the flavor lingers after you swallow. With a simple Brut, it's often only a few seconds. With an aged cuvée like Nyetimber's 1086, by contrast, it lasts considerably longer, with a lingering echo of toasted bread and ripe fruit that carries on while the acidity still registers on the palate.