Huxbear Blanc de Blancs 2021 crowned Wine of the Year 2025 at the Food Drink Devon Awards!

It's October the 7^th and I'm looking in a hotel room mirror, trying to work out how a bow tie happens. I feel like I must have worn one before, but I'm fairly confident that I haven't in my adult life. Whatever the case, being out of mud encrusted work clothes makes for a nice change of pace after harvest.

Harvest? Since you are asking, it was a bit of a mixed bag. Had you taken the opportunity to look out of the window in the last six months, you will have noticed that it was a very agreeable sort of summer, with wall to wall sunshine and constant, breathless news reporting about how it is currently warmer in Manchester than it is Athens, and that only some sort of ridiculous sap would be getting on a plane to endure the freezing temperatures of Malaga when the delights of Burnham-on-sea are available with a short car journey.

Accordingly, the entire valley had changed from its usual pleasing verdant green colour to a sort of sad looking brown by the middle of July, to the horror of the local farming types, who are usually attempting to feed cows on it this time of year.

What does this mean for vines? Well, it's a bit of an unmitigated win for them. In spite of the wine producing community in this country enjoying an increasingly good reputation by growing varieties that ripen in cooler climates, their ancestors evolved much further south, meaning that the sort of excellent summer that England occasionally throws at them is all in day's work. As an added bonus, dry weather is excellent for fruit set and hot weather even takes care of some of the mildew that is a fairly constant headache for us.

The only small fly in the ointment was the previous summer, where, if you remember, Manchester was not as hot as Athens and the valley did not go brown because the rain came down in fairly heroic quantities. The failure of the vines to successfully flower last year has the knock on effect of failing to initiate the production of flowers for the following (this) season, as a sort of additional bonus. Except in Chardonnay for some reason, which always delivers. In short, we had an exceptional, if slightly small harvest, that was an absolute joy to pick in the lovely autumnal sunshine.

I digress, quite a bit if I'm honest. Owing to the early finish of the harvest, we were able to attend the Food Drink Devon awards at Sandy Park (home of the

!) for the very first time, which accounts for the bow tie. This is exactly the sort of fancy and boozy sort of event that doesn't really mix well with harvesting grapes, where one is permanently exceptionally grimy and requiring of a relatively clear head.

We were therefore absolutely delighted to collect a gold award for our first ever Blanc de Blancs with our freshly scrubbed hands. To our delight and surprise, we were summoned to stagger up at the end of the evening to collect the Devon Wine of the Year trophy for the same wine, which is all very exciting. Almost worth the bow tie and the associated hangover if I'm honest.