Technology entrepreneur wins wine award with first vintage

A HENLEY vineyard owner says he is still in shock after winning a top wine award.

Ian Smith runs the Kingwood Estate in Kingwood Common and was awarded a silver medal in the Decanter World Wine Awards for his Classic Cuvée Brut.

The 2018 vintage of English sparkling wine is a combination of chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier and was the first produced by the vineyard.

The awards are seen as one of the most contested competitions, which this year saw almost 20,000 entries from 57 countries.

Mr Smith, who lives in Badgemore, said: “A medal from these awards is known to be one of the hardest things to win because it’s like blind tasting. But what that means is the wine has to speak for itself and so it doesn’t really matter who you are or the brand.

“When I received the email to say we’d won I was really, really pleased, I think I’m still in shock a little bit. I was hopeful but I was also realistic knowing that this was our first vintage.

“Trying to break into the wine industry can be phenomenally difficult and with this wine I just focused on creating what I thought was the best wine. It has been in bottle through the coronavirus lockdowns and so it’s seen a really turbulent time in our lives. In some ways when I saw the result, I was just really relieved.”

Mr Smith originally worked in technology and was part of the team which built the original internet banking platform in the Nineties. He moved to Henley 15 years ago in search of a “quieter” life.

He said: “I was always in technology and never in wine but with covid it made me think how technology is really quite unfulfilling. There is nothing at the end of it in terms of pleasure, it’s one of these enabling things.

“I came to this point where I was searching for something that I could actually get some tangible return from. When I came out of London, I happened across Hambleden which is just unbelievably beautiful.

“I lived there for some time and I was fortunate enough to buy some land up near Stoke Row. It was terrible for farming because it’s really flinty and chalky, but it turns out that’s exactly like the Champagne region.

“I had always drunk wine and I used to ride my motorcycle around the south of France and we would drink the cheapest wine, which was like pinot noir, out of the fridges, super cold and totally against what wine people would say but it was such a brilliant experience.

“It made me think I really want to make wine, I got the vines, I had the land and 11 years ago now sort of started on this journey.”

Mr Smith planted the vineyard in 2014 with vines from Alsace with help from viticultural agronomist John Buchan and worked alongside viticulture consultant Joel Jorgensen and winemaker Emma Rice.

He said: “I was very lucky to meet Emma and build a relationship with her. She guided us on the wine and the best process and how to handle different flavours and tastes.

“She is a young female winemaker who came out of Plumpton College in Brighton and is part of this whole new generation of people coming into winemaking and oenology.

“It’s quite an exciting industry in England to get involved with, it has been around for a while but it’s grown massively.”

Mr Smith said he worked alongside Miss Rice to “create a slightly softer more drinkable wine that was not too heavy and easily accessible for people that aren’t necessarily into wine”.

He said: “One of the real challenges in UK winemaking is ripening the grapes. You’re in this race at the end of the season as it starts to get wet. As you go into autumn the grapes are trying to rot and you’re chasing these sugar levels.

“You can harvest early to get a maximum amount of bottles but you are actually getting something at a low sugar level so you tend to get quite acidic wine.

“We actually waited as long as we could. I focused on the first vintage being about quantity, not quality, so we got around 2,000 bottles in the end.”

During the winemaking process, the wine was softened in oak barrels from Bordeaux to reduce the acidity of the chardonnay.

Decanter’s tasting notes described the wine as “Moderate fruit on the nose with lean, under-ripe lemon. Freshness on the palate, a nice aperitif style.” Mr Smith said that both his father Stephen and his three children Nathaniel, six, Isabelle, five, and Max, four, enjoyed helping out on the vineyard.

“They enjoy watching the process and they enjoy talking about it,” he said. “I try to use it as a way to inspire them to think about sustainability and I think it has been a really good experience for them.”

Mr Smith says the process has been a learning experience.

He said: “I think a lot of people are looking for this instant gratification these days, whether it’s social media or otherwise, it’s about this instant fulfilment.

“But some things do take time and there’s no way that this could have been rushed. This has taught me patience in many ways, there was no way around the 10 years it took to deliver this.

“All of the great champagne brands that I have been buying all my life to celebrate things or as gifts like Veuve Clicquot, Moët & Chandon, Kingwood is actually ranked higher.

“I suppose you associate gifts and champagne and parties with certain brands but actually when it comes to drinkability and actual enjoyment of the product, English products can be better.”