Many wine connoisseurs may have heard of Steven Spurrier, if you have you know how he changed the wine industry forever and became one of the biggest names in the trade.

But you may not know he calls Litton Cheney home and makes his own wine at Bride Valley Vineyard.

Steven Spurrier was more than instrumental in changing views of the French when it came to wine and putting Californian wine on the global wine map. And it all happened at the Judgement of Paris.

Steven had always wanted to go into the wine trade and after leaving university, worked for small wine companies and spent months travelling around vineyards.

Steven and his wife Bella were living in Paris in the 1970s where he had a wine shop, Les Caves de la Madeleine. Someone in the trade suggested Steven might want to check out some of the wine that was being produced in California.

In the 1970s, and prior to that as well, you didn't see many of the US wines due to laws about where wine could be sold, and at some stages it couldn't even be sold out of state, let alone the country. So, Steven went to California, tried some of the wines and brought them back to his wine shop in Paris.

He organised a wine tasting in 1976 which pitted the best wines be brought back from California against the best wines of the day in France, with the tasting panel made up of the great and the good of the French wine industry.

They had a professional tasting, and had to write a note and score each wine out of 100. The two favourite wines were Californian.

Up until then, everybody thought the best wines were made in France, but that changed the whole landscape of wine globally and a lot of French companies invested in California. This really put Steven on the map.

He was an ambassador to the wine industry, expanded into restaurants and warehouses before becoming a consultant, including for Singapore Airlines and Decanter. There is a Judgement of Paris day in California and even a road named after him.

On the 40th anniversary of the Judgement of Paris in 2016, Steven was invited to Washington to a state banquet in his honour where he was presented with an American flag.

He has written books, is honorary chairman of the International Wine and Spirits Competition and won a whole host of awards, including lifetime achievement awards and being named Decanter Man of the Year in 2017, but too many to list.

So, how did a man so renowned in the wine industry, and across the world, end up in a small Dorset village near Bridport with his own vineyard?

They had a big house in London, but Bella wanted a house in the country. They had their eye on their home in Litton Cheney before it was even on the market and after a few years, they eventually brought it in 1987.

However, they needed more space for their horses and ended up buying a 200-acre farm on the edge of the village. Steven noticed that the land was riddled with chalk.

He put a couple of small blocks in his pocket to show to Michael Bettane, the top lecturer at his wine school, L'Academie du Vin, and asked him where they came from. 'Champagne, of course', was his reply but Steven explained it was actually from Dorset, to which he said: "In that case you should plant a vineyard."

Inspired by this, Steven invited his friend Michael Laroche for a weekend and asked him to take some soil samples back to Chablis for analysis.

Steven said: "The results were positive for Chardonnay and cool climate varietals like Pinot Blanc and Pinot Noir. Nice to know, but we did nothing about it.

"Time passed and in the mid 1990s, attending the awards ceremony of the International wine and spirit competition, I was offered a glass of fizz and asked what I thought it was. 'Champagne of course, certainly a Blanc de Blancs, probably from Grand Cru', was my reply. Quite wrong, for it was Nyetimber Blanc de Blancs 1989 from Kent. Substantially expanded since then, Nyetimber is still the leading brand of English sparkling wine and 25 years ago it had beaten the Champagnes and top sparklers from all over the world. Fifteen years later, Ridgeview from Sussex repeated this at the 2010 Decanter World Wine Awards, but by that time, the first two hectares of Bride Valley Vineyard had already been planted."

The farm, apart from having one of the most chalk-based soils in the country – it is only 24 miles from Kimmeridge which gave its name to the similar soils in Champagne – is a steeply sloping half circle of land, where the south, south east and south west facing slopes seemed perfect for vines.

Steven added: "Seeing the increasing success of English sparkling wines, I compiled a dossier to present to the Boisset family from Burgundy, one of the great specialists in this category, in 2007 with the possibility of a joint venture.

"They were on board immediately and George Legrand and his team came out with the aim of finding around 30 hectares to plant for a potential production of 150-200,000 bottles which could be produced in a purpose-built winery."

However, there were only 10-12 hectares of really prime potential vineyard, but Steven and Bella were advised to prepare the plots for planting, buy vines from Pepinieres Guillaume – the world's best vine nursery in northern Burgundy – take the grapes to Ian Edwards, 2012 English Winemaker of the Year at nearby Furleigh Estate, to get them checked out and if all goes well, the Bossiet family would buy the wine.

With this encouragement, the first vines were planted in 2009 and the final one in 2013. There are now more than 40,000 vines on just over 10 hectares – 55 per cent Chardonnay, 25 per cent Pinot Noir and 20 per cent Pinot Meunier.

"My back of an envelope prediction," said Steven, "was that we would produce a bottle a vine, less than the litre a vine that top English vineyard consultant Stephen Skelton MW advises his clients and considerably less than in Champagne.

"Only the 2014 vintage gave quantity and by the time the grapes were pressed after the 2017 vintage, we were looking at an average of just one third of a bottle a vine.

"Then 2018 turned out to be a Mediterranean summer, giving us 60,000 bottles and we even made some very well received still Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and the less ripe 2019 brought in 52,000 bottles, so we were back on track."

From 2019 they made another Chardonnay and from the second pressing, produced some deliciously fruity still Dorset Pinot Noir Rose. Bride Valley's sparkling wines, which make up 85 to 90 per cent of the production, come under four labels: Dorset Cremant, the first and still the only English Cremant; Brut Reserve, a dominant blend of Pinot Noir with Chardonnay; Blanc de Blancs, always 100 per cent Chardonnay; and Rose Bella, a blend of Pinot Noir for colour and fruit and Chardonnay for vivacity.

Steven added: "As founder of the Decanter World Wine Awards and last year a panel judge alongside Anthony Dias-Blue at the San Francisco Wine Competition, I know that wine competitions are only as good as the judges, and respecting Susie Barrie MW, Rebecca Palmer and Oz Clarke, sole judges for the 2020 Wine GB Awards, I put in our full range. Every wine got a medal."

Bronze was awarded to Pinot Noir Rose 2019 and Brut Reserve 2017, with silver going to Chardonnay 2018, Pinot Noir 2018, Dorset Cremant 2015/17, Blanc de Blancs 2017 and Rose Bella 2016.

"The Bride Valley team thought we should have got a gold, but we are not there yet," added Steven. "When the 2018s will be entered in early 2022 I think we will be.

"The flagship wine is the Blanc de Blancs, as it really represents the soil and the Chardonnay is our best producing grape.

"I always say, if I am going to a professional tasting, I will bring our Blanc de Blancs, if I'm going to see friends, I'll bring the rose."

Why the name Bride Valley?

Steven said: "We are fortunate to be in an area deemed 'of natural beauty', consisting of seven historic villages along the River Bride, the shortest river in England, which rises at Bridehead House and meanders for eight miles before joining the English Channel at Bridport.

"In my view, wines should have a 'sense of place' and this they definitely possess."

As Bride Valley harvests its 10th vintage, where are they now?

Wine and art are linked at Bride Valley, Steven says it 'adds an element – a personal element – because it is all about connections'. He feels very much that wine is a cultural object.

"At first there was little to connect Bride Valley and Art," said Steven, "but over the past two years in the stable block behind our house, I have created a wine and art room next to our tasting room. This houses much of my collection of wine related pictures, objects and artefacts.

"Light and airy, it is a sort of kaleidoscope of visual images, where we can seat up to 24 for a tasting.

"Along the wall outside there is a disused stone lean-to building which will soon be converted to an art studio for Bella, while in the gardens at the back I have six free-standing sculptures by only women artists, which adds another dimension for visitors who come to taste.

"Philippine de Rothschild once said that, 'producing wine is easy, it's the first 100 years that are difficult'. Bride Valley is for the next and succeeding generations and Bella and I are proud to continue to develop what we can pass on to them."

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