I get quite excited about English sparkling wine.
The problem is, it normally comes with an English sparkling wine price.
Thirty quid. Thirty-five quid. Sometimes more.
So when I saw Silverhand Estate Kingscote in Tesco for £15, I genuinely thought, right, this could be interesting.
English sparkling wine, made in Kent, using the traditional method, for about the same money as plenty of decent Prosecco.
That got my attention.
First, what actually is Kingscote?
Silverhand Estate is in northwest Kent, which for me is basically down the road.
I like that already.
Kingscote is a Brut NV sparkling wine made from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.
Brut just means it is on the drier side rather than sweet.
NV means non-vintage, which sounds less glamorous than it really is. It basically means wine from different years has been blended together to keep the style consistent.
Loads of Champagne houses do exactly the same thing.
So no, non-vintage does not mean cheap or second-rate.
That is not the interesting bit anyway.
The interesting bit is how this is made.
This is made the same way as Champagne
The bubbles are created using the traditional method, which means the second fermentation happens inside the bottle.
That is the same basic method used for Champagne.
Prosecco is generally made differently, with the second fermentation happening in large tanks instead.
Neither method is automatically good or bad, but traditional-method sparkling wine tends to give you more of those flavours people associate with Champagne.
Apple.
Bread.
A bit of nuttiness.
That more rounded feel.
And here we are getting that in an English sparkling wine that cost me £15.
Now I was interested.
It looks the part
Once I opened it, the first thing I noticed was how lively it looked.
Loads of nice bubbles, lovely fresh colour, exactly what you want to see.
Then I gave it a smell.
The bottle talks about citrus, green fruit and nuttiness, and I could absolutely see where that was coming from.
There was plenty of green apple.
A little bit of that bread-like character as well.
Then something nutty underneath it, which softened everything down nicely.
It did not have that really simple fruity smell you can sometimes get from inexpensive sparkling wine.
There was more going on.
Then I tasted it
And this is where I got properly excited.
It is really good.
Especially for the money.
I got loads of that Granny Smith apple freshness, then the nuttiness came through again towards the end.
Now, I had already read “nuttiness” on the bottle, so there is always the possibility that my brain was helping me out a little bit.
Wine does that.
Someone tells you there is hazelnut in a wine and suddenly you are sitting there thinking, yes, obviously, hazelnuts everywhere.
But whether I imagined part of it or not, the wine itself was really nicely balanced.
Fresh at the front, softer towards the finish, and it stayed around for longer than I expected.
For £15, I thought it was excellent.
This is where it gets interesting
Most of the English sparkling wines people know are quite a bit more expensive.
Nyetimber, Chapel Down and plenty of others are normally sitting comfortably above this price point.
That is not a criticism of them.
English sparkling wine is expensive to make.
What makes Kingscote interesting is that it gives you a lot of what people actually want from that style without asking you to spend £30-plus.
Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.
Traditional method.
English.
Dry.
Proper sparkling wine character.
And £15 when I bought it.
That is a very good combination.
Would I serve this to people?
Absolutely.
This is exactly the sort of bottle I would happily put out when friends come over.
Serve it properly cold, pour it into decent glasses, and nobody is going to sit there thinking you have bought the cheap option.
Quite the opposite.
If they do not already know what it costs, I would be interested to see what price they guessed.
There is a good chance they would go higher.
Which, obviously, you do not need to correct immediately.
Let them think you are doing very well.
Is Silverhand Estate Kingscote worth buying?
For me, yes.
At £15, I think this is one of the more interesting affordable sparkling wines I have tried recently.
You get the freshness you want, but there is enough going on underneath that it does not just disappear after the first sip.
If you like Champagne but do not always fancy paying Champagne prices, or you want to drink more English wine without spending £30 every time you open a bottle, I would give this a go.
I would happily keep a bottle of this in the fridge.
Probably two, actually.
If you want to see the full tasting and my first reaction to Kingscote, have a look at the video below. And if you have tried this or any of the other Silverhand Estate wines, let me know what you thought. I am definitely interested in trying more after this one.
