SOPHIE EVANS
UK, SOUTH-EAST, KENT
A couple of weeks ago we nipped down to Kent to visit Sophie Evans and load the van up with a little more of her Electric Field, and to collect a new wine from the 2024 vintage: the wonderfully pure expression of that year's Pinot Gris.
As most of us who were here at the time well remember, 2024 was a very cold, rainy vintage across the UK, Sophie was out on her mini tractor every five days spraying to control mildew, often needing to spray in the rain, and even harvesting in the rain.
Pinot Gris is picked from the small patch of the vines at Sophie's home site where a seam of chalk is running beneath the clay.
Picked (in the rain) in mid-October, Pinot Gris was hand de-stemmed and foot crushed, with gentle punch downs for five days as it macerated. Fruit was basket pressed to a combination of stainless steel and glass demijohns before assembling the two a year later and bottling via gravity.
The resulting wine is truly beautiful, boasting quite fleshy fruit for such a cool year and just the slightest grip - white peach and a long saline minerality. Super elegant, a very special wine from a tricky year.
Alongside, we have a top-up of the 2024 Electric Field - only the second time Sophie has released this special field blend since her first vintage.
Electric Field is a co-ferment of all the varieties growing at Sophie's home site, grown organically over clay with a little chalk seam, at the edge of the Romney Marshes. A celebratory wine from a very tricky year in the vines, Sophie was proud to have any fruit at all from 2024, let alone a wine of such character and life.
Electric Field is a true reflection of the year, delicate fruit has a real fluidity, with pretty aromatics and some nice complexity after it's time on skins.
