‘We are crazy’: Gusbourne tasting shows the ambition behind English wine’s rise

At a recent tasting of Fifty One Degrees North 2016 in magnum, Laura Rhys MS reflected on the precision, ambition and nerve driving England’s top sparkling wines. As another promising vintage looms, Gusbourne is making its intentions clear with a prestige cuvée that aims to rival the best.

Gusbourne’s global ambassador Laura Rhys MS stood before a room of tasters at 67 Pall Mall with a grin that suggested she knew exactly what she was pouring. Fifty One Degrees North 2016 in magnum is no shy debutante. It’s a wine designed to flex.

“When we first thought about what we wanted a prestige cuvée to be, we wanted it to be the best of the best of the best,” Rhys said. “We took the best base wines from the best vineyards from the best vintages. We won’t produce it every year. We’ll produce in the years where we know we can make a wine we are super excited about.”

The tasting pitted bottles against magnums and poured rare single-vineyard wines from four sites, including two from Sussex. It was less a marketing exercise than a quiet flex from a producer confident in its kit.

‘We are crazy, but in a good way’

Rhys didn’t shy away from Gusbourne’s uncompromising approach. “We are crazy, but in a good way,” she said of the decision to remain vintage-only in a country where weather patterns can flip like a coin. “We are very happy with our vineyard sites, in Kent especially, in terms of the ripeness we get and the quality we get is, to my mind, really, really super.”

She continued: “If we had a vintage like 2024 every two years, then it would make no commercial sense to be vintage-only, but once every 12 years, [a bad vintage] becomes a part of the story.”

Gusbourne is betting on precision rather than blending away variation. “We used to go back and forth, do we want to, do we not?” Rhys said. “But at the moment, I think we are so fortunate with the blocks we have with the clones that we have and the base wine elements that we have that allow us to blend single vintage wines that are representative of each year, and also representative of the Gusbourne style.”

A patriot remembers her first pour

Long before prestige cuvées, Rhys was selling English sparkling wine to slightly sceptical diners. “I remember 20 odd years ago starting in Hotel du Vin and I was the only English sommelier in a team of wonderful French sommeliers,” she recalled. “We had three English wines on the list and I was fiercely patriotic about these wines. It was Nyetimber, Ridgeview and Chapel Down. I remember trying to get guests to taste English sparkling wine and it was often met with a sharp intake of breath.”

The first time she tasted Gusbourne, everything shifted. “I’ll never forget how blown away by it I was,” she said. “I thought there was something really exciting about these wines.”

Benchmarking with Champagne’s finest

When Fifty One Degrees North was still a project in the making, Rhys and her team quietly poured it blind against Cristal 2014, La Grande Annee 2014 and Krug. “The wine showed really well, and that was really exciting,” she said.

Fifty One Degrees North is always Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. In 2014, it was 64% Chardonnay and 36% Pinot Noir, with around 16% of the base wine aged in oak. “To even get a look-in during the grading process for Fifty One Degrees North, the base wines have to be special in their own right,” she added.

The magnum effect

Magnums aren’t just a party trick. “Magnums in general we don’t have masses of, so we do sell out quickly,” Rhys explained. “Magnums are really exciting formats. Sommeliers love working with them, collectors love collecting and ageing them, but there are also a lot of people who just enjoy buying bottles over magnums.”

Gusbourne started bottling magnums in 2010 and 2011 with just 200 bottles. The scale is bigger now, but still measured. “We don’t bottle the same rate of magnums as we do bottles, because we wouldn’t sell them all,” she said.

Current pricing at the estate sets Fifty One Degrees North 2016 at £195 a bottle and £395 in magnum. Gusbourne Agrafe 2020 sits at £85, Oak Reserve 2019 at £75 and Blanc de Noirs Down Field Sussex 2019 at £95.

The price of ambition

£395 is no casual splurge. At that price point, any wine is playing in serious company. Whether or not a bottle should cost that much is another debate entirely. What matters here is what it’s standing alongside.

Fifty One Degrees North isn’t pitched against the everyday prosecco and Cava crowd. It’s going head-to-head with the finest names from across the Channel: Cristal, Krug, Dom Pérignon. For Gusbourne, the question isn’t whether English sparkling can match Champagne. It’s whether it can be judged on the same stage.

English wine’s broader boom

The release comes against a backdrop of steady growth in English wine. National sales rose by 3% in 2024, according to WineGB. Still wine jumped by 10% while sparkling wine maintained volumes despite wider category pressures.

Vineyard numbers have grown to 1,104, with Kent leading the pack. Total area under vine now spans 4,841 hectares. Chardonnay represents 33% of plantings, with Pinot Noir close behind at 30%.

The quiet confidence of a new era

The mood in the industry is buoyant. As reported by the drinks business, producers across the southeast are quietly confident about 2025. Nyetimber’s senior winemaker Brad Greatrix has compared the season’s conditions to 2018. Black Chalk, Tinwood and others are anticipating generous, ripe fruit.

For Rhys, this tasting wasn’t just about showing a wine. It was about staking a claim. “What’s really exciting about Fifty One Degrees North, and about [Nyetimber] 1086 and other wines like that, it feels like you’re beginning a new era for the industry,” she said.

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