Chapel Down boasts a state of the art winery and produces all wines on the estate, both still and sparkling.
The grapes are hand-picked and transported to the winery in small bins. They are gently tipped into one of our modern membrane presses and the resultant juice fractions are collected in stainless steel tanks. All still wines and sparkling base wines are fermented with selected yeast strains at cool temperatures for up to 3 weeks. Some maturation of sparkling base wines and red wines occurs in French and American oak barriques. These wines are topped and tasted regularly throughout their maturation to ensure freshness and homogeneity. The wines are then racked, blended, stabilised and filtered before bottling.
Our sparkling wines spend up to 3 years on lees, "sur lie" as part of our house style. After the desired period of maturation the bottles are hand transferred to our modern Gyro pallets for riddling. The riddled wines are disgorged on our new bottling line and packed and labelled.
Chapel Down's modern winery enables our winemakers to produce smart, varietal and fresh wines that display the best of our English Vineyards. It is our aim to produce the best wines in the UK.
Chapel Down conducts guided tours of the winery and vineyards. One of our expert guides will show and explain the winemaking, riddling, disgorging and bottling processes. It is an experience not to be missed.
If you would like to stay in touch with what's happening at Chapel Down we would love you to Join Our Wine Society. Membership is free and we will contact you on a regular basis by email with news and offers.
Introducing Demelza Fizz by Chapel Down
Expertly blended by Chapel Down English Wines for Demelza Hospice Care for Children, a unique sparkling wine, made with Chapel Down's award-winning Pinot Reserve 2004.
The bespoke blend is exclusive to Demelza and is available for supporters to buy by both the bottle and the case.
All profits from the sale of Demelza Fizz comes to Demelza.
Demelza Hospice Care for Children supports over 700 life-limited children and their families across South East London, East Sussex, and Kent.
To order your Demelza Fizz or to find out more about Demelza log onto: www.demelza.org.uk
Chapel Down is delighted to support Demelza Hospice Care for Children.