Coates & Seely, Reserve Brut, Hampshire, United Kingdom NV

There's no rule that English sparkling wines must feature in our Best in Show selection; quality is all. Year after year, though, it is precisely the quality of those English sparkling wines submitted to the DWWA that keeps impressing our final-round judges and insisting on inclusion. What distinguishes this wine is that it's not a vintage or late-disgorged speciality, as with previous Best in Show winners, but a non-vintage blend of the three classic varieties. It's pale gold in colour, with a steady stream of fine bubbles; aromatically you'll find ultra-freshness and a distinctive sappy cool infusing the shy orchard fruits, like a sniff of an early spring morning before the mist has lifted. It's taut, tight and stony on the palate, in bracing aperitif style -- but the quality of the fruit, teased to ripeness over the long-houred English summer, is there for all to taste.

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