Coates and Seely - Rosé NV

" In 2006 Christian Seely, the English Managing Director of of Axa Millesimes (owners of Chateau Pichon-Longueville, Chateau Suduiraut and Quinta do Noval, among others) had the first inklings of an idea. At around the same time in the City of London - two years before the global banking crisis - an old friend of Seely's, Nicholas Coates, resigned from a successful career in finance and returned to his home at the foot of the North Hampshire Downs in England, determined to discover a new way of life in tune with the countryside around him.

 

A year later, in October 2007, the two friends - who had first met at business school in Fontainebleau over twenty years previously - sat on the vine-covered terrace of Seely's Bordeaux home and proceeded to turn that initial idea into a hard plan: to create, in partnership together, a great English sparkling wine made from Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay grapes grown on the Southern chalk downlands of England. They would call their sparkling wine 'Coates & Seely' ​​​​​.

 

A year passed, during which they scoured the slopes of southern England, in vain, for the ideal terroir. Then, on the verge of giving up, a series of chance encounters led them to a secluded valley of outstanding natural beauty only a mile and a half from Coates's Hampshire home. On one side of the valley, a south-facing chalk slope was planted already with a twenty-acre vineyard. Known as 'The Wooldings', it had been established by Charles Cunningham, a 48 year old Englishman, fifteen years previously. Tragically, Charles's life was cut short seven years previously and, as an act of devotion, the vineyard was being kept going by his 84-year old widowed mother, Daphne Cunningham. It was with her that Coates & Seely formed a partnership to develop the site into a best-in-class vineyard of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier vines capable of producing the highest quality fruit for English sparkling wine. "