News 

Hakkasan launches The Golden Nectar cocktail created by an all-female team to celebrate International Women’s Day

We are delighted that Hundred Hills has been selected to feature in the new cocktail which has just launched at Hakkasan. The Golden Nectar is a beautifully presented cocktail that has been inspired by the old classics, where both craft and individual ingredients are key players. It has been created by an all-female team to celebrate International Women’s Day. Sommelier Alessia Mandolini chose Hundred Hills ‘to balance the syrupy notes of the cordial with a crisp, mineral finish’. The team really have created the ultimate luxury cocktail!

Watch the launch video here

How English fizz newcomer Hundred Hills has got wine critics purring

Hundred Hills is a relative newcomer to the English sparkling wine revolution and yet its six wines are already making serious waves. The winery itself, nestled as it is in the Chilterns, has been rated by Jancis Robinson MW as one of the top English wineries, with its Blanc de Noirs 2019 rated as best English fizz and the new vintage of its Blanc de Blancs, as best English BdB. Geoffrey Dean went to see what all the fuss is about and to discover from owner/ winemaker Stephen Duckett, what he’s done differently to stand out from the crowd.

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The second cocktail featuring Hundred Hills base wine launches at The Connaught

Very exciting to see the ‘Your Point of View’ cocktail launch at The Connaught, created by Agostino Perrone this eye catching cocktail encaptures how perspectives change in the same way as images, colours and flavours, it just depends on your point of view. This unique flavour combination really does create an unforgettable cocktail, showcasing the exemplary skills of the mixologists at The Connaught Bar, which has been listed as one of the World’s Best Bars.

67 Pall Mall visit to taste new releases

Always a pleasure to welcome the sommelier team and members from 67 Pall Mall out to Hundred Hills. At this time of year it’s pruning lessons, winemaking techniques and tasting new and as yet unreleased wines, but whatever we turned to there was always terrific energy in the room! As we start sending out our own wines around the world it’s great to be showcasing some of our limited edition vintage wines with 67 as it ‘goes global’.

The Fat Duck pairs Hundred Hills with their iconic new dish

A sensory experience like no other – we are delighted to see that the team at The Fat Duck have chosen to pair our 2018 Preamble with their creative new cereal inspired dish, with flavours of truffled egg mousse, toasted bread cream and jellied tomato consommé this really is set to be an exceptional and very distinctive pairing. The perfect ‘full English’ flavour experience!

The Coravin team visit Hundred Hills

It was great to welcome Greg and the Coravin team out to Hundred Hills to share a glass of our beautiful Rosé de Saignée. We love using the Coravin system to keep our limited edition wines and magnums perfectly fresh for all our guests visiting Hundred Hills. Congratulations to the Coravin team, a really robust and effective solution!

Watch the video from Coravin’s visit here

Bastille Day at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons

Where better to celebrate the Declaration of the Rights of Man than at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons fabulous Bastille Day party and who better to celebrate with than Raymond Blanc, surely one the few people to be able to proudly sport both an OBE and Légion d’honneur for the occasion!

Watch the video from Raymond’s Bastille Day party here

Hundred Hills sponsor the Sublime Strings Charity Concert at Cadogan Hall

We were delighted to sponsor the Rennie Grove charity concert held at the Cadogan Hall in the heart of Chelsea. The concert provided guests with a unique opportunity to hear a trio of internationally-renowned young musicians. Sheku Kanneh-Mason who performed at the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s wedding, Braimah Kanneh-Mason and Plinio Fernandes performed a wonderful selection of movements across a range of styles from folk to classical, showcasing captivating combinations of cello, violin and guitar. All proceeds from this very memorable event went to Rennie Grove who support families affected by life-limiting illness.

Find out more about the work Rennie Grove do here

2021 Harvest Report

The 2021 vintage has the potential to be an exceptional one for Hundred Hills. Despite some cold spring nights, we started a late season with all the buds intact and warm weather quickly allowed the vines to catch up. Then a cool summer turned into a warm autumn and small, intense grapes ripened beautifully across all our ten parcels of chardonnay and pinot noir. The aromas and flavours are intense in the grape musts, with an excellent balance of sugars and acids promising some fine, long aging wines ahead for the 2021 vintage.
The cold Spring delayed bud burst by a month, but the burst of warm weather in May left flowering only a week later than normal, in early July. Summer rains created strong growing conditions and veraison at the start of September saw an extraordinarily warm few weeks as the grapes started to ripen.

Too good to miss: 2018 Rosé de Saignée

At Atlas, we aren’t in the habit of offering the same wines twice, but I think a number of clients may have missed our offer on the sparkling wines of Oxfordshire-based Hundred Hills late last year, in which we offered the extraordinary, limited production 2018 Rosé de Saignée. This new release from the estate, which I can safely say is easily the finest English sparkling wine we have collectively tasted, is too good to overlook.

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Hundred Hills wine top sparkling wine at Raymond Blanc’s restaurant

In just two weeks, an Oxfordshire-made sparkling wine has become the number one best seller listed at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. The wine is made by ‘Hundred Hills’ which kept its 42-acre vineyard in Oxfordshire quiet for almost 10 years until the first wine was aged perfectly. The two-starred Michelin chef said it “amongst the very finest” that he has ever tasted.

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Hundred Hills support Impetus

We were delighted to support Impetus in their outstanding work with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Natural History Museum reception was the perfect setting for guests to enjoy our Preamble No.2 wine and our Blanc de Blancs magnums proved to be an exciting auction lot!

Find out more about the work Impetus do here

Hundred Hills debuts at The Connaught

We are honoured to see our base wine featuring in the Eclipse, an impressive cocktail created by the team led by Agostino Perrone, Director of Mixology of Mayfair’s Connaught Bar – the World’s Best Bar (50 Best). The Eclipse takes inspiration from the high contrast photography of English street photographer, Alan Schaller, which in turn inspired English glassware designer, Richard Brendon to realise a futuristic glass for it featuring a shiny black core and bright white outside.

Read the full press release

Watch the video

Chalk of the town

Searching England for the perfect vineyard to produce world class sparkling wines, Stephen and Fiona Duckett found the Stonor Valley’s chalk soil a perfect match to Champagne’s Côtes des Blancs. If you have ever sipped Champagne in the Côtes des Blancs, or toured the glittering Champagne houses of Epernay, then you’ll know that chalk goes an awfully long way down.

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Hundred Hills 2017 Blanc de Blancs features first on Stefan Neumann MS wines of the year tasting list

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The Team from Pied à Terre Restaurant join for Harvest at Hundred Hills

It was wonderful to have Asimakis, Suze, Chanel and Nia join us for what was a very memorable harvest at Hundred Hills.

Read more here

Le Manoir offer their guests the rare invitation to visit Hundred Hills

We are delighted to be partnering with Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons to welcome their guests out to Hundred Hills for exclusive wine tasting experiences and are very much looking forward to a lively season ahead. Our 2016 First Edition wine, now regularly enjoyed by guests of Le Manoir, is brimming with honeyed fruits, nectarines and apricots and a creamy intensity on the palate complemented by delicate exotic touches. It is lovely to see guests of Le Manoir celebrating and creating lasting memories with one of our finest wines to date!

Watch the video

Is this England’s most select wine estate?

Bounded by ancient woodlands carpeted, during the time of my visit, in bluebells, no pylons mar perfectionist and founder, Stephen Duckett’s Hundred Hills wine estate because he had all twelve structures dismantled in favour of threading the cables deep underground. Nor will you encounter a deer heedlessly gorging on slowly ripened Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes because the herd Duckett discovered on first seeing what was then Bank Farm resulted in the construction of, unseen from the estate, two miles of fencing encapsulating the amphitheatre of 85,000 vines sown in this dry chalk valley, six miles north of Henley.

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2018 Harvest Report

The 2018 vintage will undoubtedly become a reference vintage for Hundred Hills and for English Sparklings more generally. The stars aligned to deliver a perfect budburst and midsummers day flowering. Then the warmest summer on record turned into a warm, dry autumn and beautiful, perfectly ripe grapes were hand picked across all our ten parcels of chardonnay and pinot noir in early October. Each parcel yielded its own distinct aromas and flavours, with an excellent balance of sugars and low acids offering ideal ingredients for non-malolactic winemaking.

2018 was certainly a remarkable year for English vineyards and even by May 1st unseasonably warm temperatures had yielded a verdant green across the vineyards as shoots and leaves grew rapidly. June saw tempartures touch 30 ̊C allowing an almost complete fruit set and the bunch structure to expand, making room for plenty of fully ripened grapes later in the season.