ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Champagne is not just a drink. It is deep in the fabric of our culture.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
FRANK SINATRA: (Singing) I get no kick from champagne.
THE NOTORIOUS B I G: (Singing) Now we sip champagne when we thirsty.
TAYLOR SWIFT: ...(Singing) Landing, champagne problems.
SHAPIRO: So what happens when the king of bubbles gets dethroned? This week, for the first time, a British bottle won Champion Sparkling Wine at the International Wine Challenge. This is the first time a non-champagne has taken the competition's top prize. Cherie Spriggs is head winemaker at Nyetimber. Her 2016 Blanc to Blanc Magnum is the new reigning champion. Welcome and congratulations.
CHERIE SPRIGGS: Oh, thank you so much. It's an honor.
SHAPIRO: This seems to have taken the wine world by surprise. Did it surprise you?
SPRIGGS: You know, we have been believing in the possibility of what we can do here in England and particularly at Nyetimber for, well, my entire time that I've worked at the company, which is about 18 years now.
SHAPIRO: Wow.
SPRIGGS: So in a way, it was a wonderful validation of what we've been working towards for quite some time.
SHAPIRO: You beat out more than a thousand others. What makes this bottle so special?
SPRIGGS: You know, we've got some pretty exciting potential when we grow grapes here in England for sparkling wine. We have this beautiful delicacy of flavor, and we have this wonderful, crisp acidity that keeps the wine fresh and vibrant. And I think the judges have keyed into the balance point that we achieve between these beautiful fruit flavors but still a crisp freshness in the wine as well.
SHAPIRO: You grow all the grapes in the south of England, and I have never thought of the U.K. as a top wine-producing country. Have I been missing out on something, or are you the anomaly? I mean, help orient us.
SPRIGGS: To be fair, it's a reasonably short history. Our first vines at Nyetimber - and we are the pioneers of the English sparkling wine industry - were planted in 1988. And the first wine was made in '92 and released in 1996. So our history isn't terribly long, but we have this beautiful ridge of soils going through the south. We have the English Channel, and then those same soils flow on through all the way through to Champagne. So we share a lot in common with Champagne, who have held the benchmark of quality for decades.
SHAPIRO: You personally also won Sparkling Winemaker of the Year for the...
SPRIGGS: Yes.
SHAPIRO: ...Second time. You are still the only woman ever to have won that award.
SPRIGGS: Yes.
SHAPIRO: Why do you think there is still such a massive gender imbalance at the top tiers of winemaking?
SPRIGGS: You know, in the old world - so the European wine areas that have been making wine for decades - there has been a very, very heavy male bias towards winemakers. Now, in my set of colleagues in the more newer-world areas, there are certainly many more females now making beautiful, stunning wines. So I think that's more question of time, and we'll see more and more balance come into those awards as the years go on.
SHAPIRO: Does winning these awards open up new possibilities for you as a winemaker?
SPRIGGS: When I think about winemaking, we only do it - we only harvest the grapes once per year. And if you become a head winemaker at the time you're about 30 and you retire when you're 65, you get about 35 chances at it. And for me, I look at something like this as more just validation to keep going in the direction that I have been so far because personally, I feel like as a winemaker, you don't want to change tracks too many times because you're really only doing this about 35 times in your life, and that's not that many when you think of it that way.
SHAPIRO: That's Cherie Spriggs, head winemaker at Nyetimber in England, which just made history by winning the Champion Sparkling Wine trophy at the International Wine Challenge. Thank you and congratulations again.
SPRIGGS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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