DORSET’S award-winning English sparkling wine producer, Furleigh Estate near Bridport has been medal hunting at the toughest sparkling wine competition in the world.

Furleigh’s entries impressed a rigorous panel of fizz experts at the Champagne and Sparkling Wine World Championships (CSWWC). Furleigh’s Brut Rose 2010 was awarded silver in a blind tasting among hundreds of sparkling wines of similar style and origin.

According to competition founder, judge and wine writer Tom Stevenson, the goal of the CSWWC is to award excellence and guide consumers to the very best sparkling wines.

The competition only awards gold and silver medals, unlike other wine competitions that award bronze and commended to around 30 per cent of wines that enter.

By doing so competition organisers believe it raises the bar on standards, thus supporting its reputation of having a tough and rigorous judging process.

Furleigh Estate owner Rebecca Hansford said: “We are no strangers to the rigorous tasting process that wines undergo at both UK and international competitions, especially the CSWWC, which they call the toughest fizz competition on the planet! It’s a great achievement to be awarded a silver medal for one of our best-selling sparkling wines.

“As a small producer, it’s especially rewarding and satisfying to know that we are up there on the medal list with some of the world’s biggest and oldest Champagne and sparkling wine producers.”

Furleigh, which has 55,000 vines on the estate, has had a fantastic run of awards so far this year– the Brut Rose picked up another trophy at the International Wine Championships, along with Silver for the Classic Cuvee, and Furleigh’s Bacchus Fume 2014 won a trophy at the English and Welsh Wine of the Year Competition for the most outstanding oaked white wine.

The CSWWCs, which receives entries from all over the world, proved to be rewarding for English vineyards this year, with 20 other English wine producers picking up silver and gold medals.

There are now 502 vineyards in the UK and producers like Furleigh who receive prestigious awards are proof that the standard of English sparkling wine production really is on par with the Champagne houses, said Rebecca.

Rebecca said: “I think British consumers are becoming much more aware about the quality of English sparkling wines, and starting to understand that our production process and end product is the same as Champagne, the only difference being that our grapes are grown on English soil.”

Furleigh Estate is owned and run by Ian Edwards and Rebecca Hansford, with Ian being the Furleigh winemaker. Ian is a graduate of the Wine Studies course at Plumpton College, part of Brighton University. Furleigh Estate is very much a family business with Furleigh being Rebecca’s childhood home. The family farm was sold by Rebecca’s father in the 1990s and then came up for sale in 2004, when Rebecca and Ian were looking for a new home for their young family.

The estate consists of 80 acres of fields, lakes and woods set in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The vineyard has 55,000 vines growing on three sites all within five miles of the Furleigh Estate winery. Varieties are mostly the Champagne varieties of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, but there is also some Bacchus and Rondo for the Furleigh still wines.

The vines at Furleigh were planted in 2005 and 2006. In 2007 the purpose built 5,000 sq ft winery was put up and equipped with the latest French and German kit. Bottling takes place each year, using mobile bottling equipment from Epernay. After bottling the wine is stored in a temperature controlled store. All the sparkling wine spends at least 15 months on lees, with some spending a lot longer than this.