Gutter & Stars wine wins Bacchus of the Year award

Chris Wilson, the winemaker based at Chesterton Mill, is delighted to have received a well-respected industry award for one of his 2021 Gutter & Stars wines.

The win, for its 2021 Bacchus, ‘Strange News from Another Star’ has won the Bacchus of the Year award in Tim Atkin MW’s England 2022 Special Report, written by Tom Hewson.

Tom Hewson tasted 300 wines for this report, sparkling and still, from producers large and small, established and new. With 64 pages of tasting notes, scores, awards and analysis, he has delivered the most comprehensive, up-to-date survey of English wine currently available.

In the report, Tom said of the wine: “There’s a little white peach sweetness, a spot of fragrant pear and a subtle lick of oak to bolster the texture and length.

“A very good job with a difficult brief in 2021, and the highest-scoring Bacchus in this year’s report.”

Chris said: “It was announced last week by Instagram. The wines are judged blind. I was surprised to be honest, not because it’s not good, but because I’m still relatively new to this so it’s quite unusual. The grapes from this wine came from the Crouch Valley in Essex.

“I’ll be releasing two Bacchi next spring, including a rosé Bacchus – my first rosé.”

English wine is changing at a bewildering pace. Spurred on by the sparkling wine successes of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the fields of southern England have seen plantings on an unprecedented scale over the last decade; there are ambitious new producers of sparkling wine, boutique operations, negociants, and even still wine specialists, all vying for a piece of the positivity surrounding the industry. After the challenges of 2021, 2022 is proving that 2018 and 2020 were no flukes, either. England may rest at the Northern limits of viticultural viability, but the ball is increasingly falling on the right side of the line.

‘Strange News from Another Star’ is available online or at Grape Britannia, price £22.