{"id":557,"date":"2010-05-08T22:28:08","date_gmt":"2010-05-08T22:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=557"},"modified":"2010-05-08T22:28:08","modified_gmt":"2010-05-08T22:28:08","slug":"hush-heath-estate-balfour-brut-one-of-the-uks-top-wines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/champagne\/hush-heath-estate-balfour-brut-one-of-the-uks-top-wines","title":{"rendered":"Hush Heath Estate Balfour Brut – one of the UK’s top wines"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Today was our 17th wedding anniversary. Yet as Fiona presented me with an anniversary card, I shuddered. Raw fear. Terror. I’d forgotten, and unlike Basil Fawlty, who pretended to forget his anniversary to spring a surprise on Sybil (Agincourt? Trafalgar? Crecy? Poitiers? Yom Kippur?), I had genuinely forgotten. It’ not that I hadn’t remembered the date of our wedding; rather that the 8th had come a little too quickly.<\/p>\n

Fiona was gracious. When I got back from walking the dog on Hounslow Heath, she’d lined up a couple of movies and a couple of bottles of fizz. And so we watched Bridget Jones (films one and two) in succession, drinking two very good sparkling wines. It wasn’t a penance, even though I did feel guilty. I enjoyed both films – they’re fun, and well written. And I was incredibly grateful to Fiona for being so forgiving.<\/p>\n

The first fizz was a very impressive Champagne de Saint Gall Premier Cru 2004, from Marks & Spencer. A serious Blanc de Blancs of real class. The second, from the UK, matched it for class, which makes it one of the UK’s top wines.<\/p>\n

Hush Heath Estate Balfour Brut Rose 2006 Kent, England
\n<\/strong>12.5% alcohol. Orange\/pink colour. Powerful, quite structured and intense with savoury, citrussy notes and some herbiness. There’s a hint of strawberry\/plum fruit, as well as high acidity. This is a complex, savoury sparkling wine that’s full of class, and which has real intensity. 91\/100 (\u00a335 Marks & Spencer, Waitrose)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was our 17th wedding anniversary. Yet as Fiona presented me with an anniversary card, I shuddered. Raw fear. Terror. I’d forgotten, and unlike Basil Fawlty, who pretended to forget…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[360,394],"class_list":["post-557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-champagne","tag-champagne","tag-england"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":559,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557\/revisions\/559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}