![]() ![]() The long soak is welcome after a morning tour around the newly opened winery, followed by a superior platter-style lunch of locally made cheese, charcuterie and smoked trout in its new on-site café, The Tasting Room, washed down with its classy Dancer in Pink blend of Pinots’ Précoce, Gris and Noir (2021, £19.99 Grape Britannia), and after a hike through the beautiful Test Valley, boasting one of England’s greatest trout rivers, much coveted by fly fishing enthusiasts. We’re in Poppy, one of four stylish treehouses owned by Wild Escapes that edge the vines at Black Chalk Vineyard, the only sound are the birds and the gentle plop of raindrops as sunlight peeps periodically through the leaves. Lying in a warm, suds-filled copper bath on an outside deck clutching a glass of English fizz is about as hedonistic as it gets in Hampshire. Both are cooked by Tom himself, a former restaurant inspector for leading guidebooks who is now preparing Michelin-star quality cooking in his own kitchen. This is replaced in the low season with an elegant wine-matched supper for 12 guests, Wednesdays through to Sundays. The new Ventnor outpost cranks up the luxury with its individually designed rooms, each with sea views, and a creative small plates lunch menu served on the terrace during the summer months. The newly opened six-room guest house with restaurant is the brainchild of Tom and Ashley Fahey, who run the popular Terrace restaurant in Yarmouth on the western side of the island. This is the first of nine courses, each paired with a different wine plucked from the Wine Room, which lists both an ‘In’ and ‘Out’ price, handwritten on brown paper tags dangling from bottle necks, with mark-ups at half the industry average. The accompanying dish is a refined riff on island speciality ‘crab on chips’ – just-picked white crab meat on a potato terrine with pickled apple, and a crab and potato tortilla topped with a sea truffle and chicken glaze. The moon shimmers on the water in Ventnor Bay as we sip Coates & Seely fizz from Hampshire under a glass-covered pergola at a stylishly restored Italianate mansion. September releases 2022: full score table.Rhône 2021 score table: top white wines. ![]() March releases on the Place de Bordeaux 2023.
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