Laura Hadland #49
Telling the story of English wine
Laura Hadland has been volunteering at Rothley Wine and giving wine tasting sessions there for 7 years and I also give private tastings. She has been blogging and writing about wine for over a decade. Her publications on wine can also be found detailed at Muck Rack as well as her blog. During Covid she has featured the activities of the Rothley Wine Estate through her writing and social media to help bring the story of English wine to a new audience. She has also supported the wine maker, the only employee at the vineyard, by adapting the ticketing system and wine tasting sessions that she delivers there in order to help the micro-business to survive and thrive during lockdown. Laura’s unique delivery of these unique English wines has not just promoted sales, but their tastings have received only 5* ratings across platforms in 2020 and 2021.
Reviews
Now I spend a lot of time telling people about vintage variation at this little boutique vineyard. That is to say that every year we make wines using the same grapes in roughly the same proportion, yet they come out tasting incredibly different. Don’t get me wrong, the 2015 Battle Royal has been popular. I’ve called it the “non-rosé drinkers rosé” or “the grown up rosé” because of its dry, savoury character. It also has an interesting complexity that has arisen as it has aged in the bottle (I know, that should be wrong, but I have a feeling that English whites and rosés, well the good ones anyway, may gain interesting character when they age and lose their initial fresh fruitiness. But that’s probably a future blog post).