Chapel Down, Bacchus, 2008

It has been quite a while since an English white wine has been reviewed by the Wine Rambler. Chapel Down is a well respected name in the English wine business, so we were curious to see what we would get for almost ten quid.

First of all you get some fizz when unscrewing the cap. The colour is clean, with some fizzy bubbles (initially), but quite pale. The nose has lots of elderflower, fresh green apple and herbs. On the palate apple, fresh citrus acidity, some spice (pepper?) and a little mineral. The finish is dominated by citrus fruit and elderflower.

Not a bad showing at all for England this time. Very fresh and crisp and, initially, fizzy, you could almost drop a bit of fruit in there and offer it to your guests at a garden party as refreshing aperitif. Having said that, we all felt that the wine was lacking the depth to be really interesting - despite of nine of us taking part in this tasting, we drank less than half a bottle of the Bacchus, much less than of any other wine that night. If the wine would be two or perhaps three pounds cheaper I would recommend it for an occasion such as the above mentioned one, but for almost ten quid you can get much better.