News 

Bocuse d’Or

For those of you already familiar with the Bocuse d’Or you’ll be excited to hear that Hundred Hills have been invited to join the coming two-years of intense build up as Team UK takes on the world! For the many of you who I’m sure are not already familiar, the Bocuse d’Or is the world’s most extraordinary cooking competition, the so called “Chefs’ Olympics”, where the very best chefs in the world compete side by side in a two-day festival of high energy, haute cuisine cooking in Lyon.

This time around, the UK’s team for the biennial tournament will feature Clare Smyth of CORE as president leading a very strong and experienced team headed by Tom Phillips of Restaurant Story. Clare is the first and only female British chef to earn three Michelin stars and only the fourth British chef in history to receive the honour. Taking a UK team to glory in the Bocuse d’Or feels like one of the very few ways her achievements to date could be surpassed!

To kick off the campaign all eight of Britain’s three-star Michelin chef’s are coming together for the first time to deliver a truly unique evening, where each of them will create a single dish to be enjoyed by two hundred guests, at the beautiful new Raffles Hotel at the Old War Office on Whitehall. And Hundred Hills will be there to support them, with different wines carefully paired with some of the fabulous dishes on offer.

It will undoubtedly be quite a night with funds raised to both support Team UK compete in heats in Norway and hopefully on to the final in Lyon, and also to support the Cancer Platform charity.

Watch the B’ocuse d’Or UK reel here

Read our full Christmas newsletter here

A beautiful Harvest at Hundred Hills

The 2023 harvest now all over for another year and pinot noirs ‘bled’ once again for our rosé de saignée. The intensity from small berries this year is stunning, and with the acid structure exactly where we’d like it, these musts have terrific potential. Fermentation in barrels now underway and we don’t expect to need to filter or fine these wines before they go into bottle for secondary fermentations next spring. So really all we need to do now is patiently wait for a few more years…..

Pied à Terre lists Hundred Hills 2019 Blanc de Noirs by the glass

We were thrilled to share our wines last week in an intimate dinner at the institution that is Pied à Terre Restaurant. The enigmatic David Moore was one of the first to serve our gastronomic Preamble on their wine pairing back in 2021, Asimakis Chaniotis and the team subsequently joined us to pick grapes for the 2021 harvest.

Highlights among many of the evening were our rich, umami toned 2019 Hillside No.3 served alongside English crayfish, white asparagus and a caviar beurre blanc, our fresh 2018 Signature Rosé highlighted by a delicate Gariguette strawberry Mille Feuille with basil and strawberry sorbet and a rare final glimpse of our 2018 Rosé de Saignée perfectly pitched against an Assiette of French rabbit and heritage carrots.

Our highly rated 2019 Blanc de Noirs is now available at Pied à Terre by the glass, courtesy of newly gilded and charming Head Sommelier Ciaran Bagchus.

Thank you to Theo Harrison from Uncorked for organising such a memorable evening.

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.

Read the full article

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 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

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

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.

Read the full press release

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

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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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

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.

Read the full press release