Danbury Ridge prospected the land due to its unusual geological make-up.
John Atkinson MW, consultant for Danbury Ridge, had noticed the quality of the 2020 Essex vintage ‘despite high rainfall’. This prompted him to research soil properties, initially together with Lee Jones of the British Geological Survey.
Atkinson then developed a detailed map focusing on the ‘plasticity of London Clay’, which he said ‘stretches from Windsor to Margate to Harwich’. While this covers a vast area, ‘extreme plasticity at the surface is very rare, as is the case in Bordeaux,’ he added.
This plasticity is mainly due to the presence of the mineral smectite which has immense water-holding capacity but makes it difficult for vine roots to extract that water, creating a positive stress situation conducive to high quality fruit.
This ‘ability to hold water and release it slowly’, is key to fruit quality, according to Atkinson and works to a vine’s advantage in both dry and wet years.
Plantings in the new Danbury Ridge site will be 80% Pinot Noir and 20% Chardonnay. Establishment of the vines will be slow as they struggle to take root in this environment and Atkinson does not expect a first crop until later this decade.
The new site will take the producer’s total plantings to 17ha.
‘Chosen terroirs are rare, though estuarine Essex is quite blessed overall,’ Atkinson said.
Canewdon is south of the River Crouch, in the Rochford district of Essex, an area hitherto without vines. Most Essex plantings are in the Dengie Peninsula in the Maldon district, known as Crouch Valley, the area between the Blackwater Estuary and the River Crouch. Clay soils and the warm and dry climate here favour still rather than sparkling wine production.
Essex created headlines last year when California-based fine wine group Jackson Family Wines bought 26ha of land in the Crouch Valley. CEO Charlie Holland confirmed that 12ha were planted this spring.
Essex sees further expansion with not one but two wineries in construction.
Contract winemakers Itasca Wines is building a ‘dual-purpose’ facility in the village of Stow Maries overlooking the River Crouch. Head winemaker Ben Smith said: ‘it will have equipment to process ultra-premium still wine, specifically Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. In addition, we also have a high degree of automation for machine-harvested fruit.’
Smith added that the existing site in Hampshire focuses on sparkling wines, while the Essex site will be dedicated to still wine. The £3m investment will have a 1,400-ton capacity and is set to open in 2025.
Henry Sugden, founder and CEO of Defined Wines which already has a contract winemaking facility in Kent, confirmed that it will open a new facility with a 150-ton capacity in the village of Holton St Mary in Essex. The new venture will be ready to service East Anglian winemakers in time for the 2024 harvest.
According to WineGB’s latest Industry Report, there were 325ha of vines in Essex in 2023, 8% of the UK’s total vine plantings of 3,928ha.