Champagne Taittinger's Domaine Evremond is the first English vineyard built from scratch by a Champagne house. Their brand new release, Edition 2, is an absolute showstopper!it is more dense and complex than the Edition 1, with riper fruit but at the same time a sense of elevated finesse, demonstrating with ease the winemaker's Champenoise expertise and innate knowledge and understanding of the grapes across terroirs. Released at the same price as Edition 1 last year, just £235 IB per 6 bottles, this is an absolute bargain versus its French peers, many of which it clearly outclasses already! Whilst it is available in cases of 6, for the same equivalent price, we are instead offering it in cases of 3 bottles in the brand new white gift boxes.

Jancis Robinson MW was so impressed she couldn't help comparing it to Taittinger's legendary cuvee Comtes de Champagne, writing "Surprisingly rich, creamy nose – a nod to Comtes de Champagne?!....So ripe, I’m not sure I would guess it was English if served it blind. The nose is already quite complex – amazingly so for an unreleased wine!"

• In 2015, Champagne Taittinger and Hatch Mansfield partnered to create Domaine Evremond, a premium English sparkling wine.
• Kent was chosen for its optimal growing conditions: Chalk soil; South or southwest-facing slopes, Below 100m altitude, and with natural shelter
• In 2015, a fruit farm in Chilham, Kent, was secured, marking the first investment in the UK by a Champagne house, and remains the only project to have been started by a Champagne house from scratch.
• The name honours Charles de Saint-Évremond, who introduced Champagne to the court of Charles II.
• By 2017, 21 hectares of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Pinot Meunier were planted.
• The vineyard is managed by Taittinger’s Director of Viticulture, Christelle Rinville, working closely with Mark Gaskain. The winemaking is led by Taittinger’s Director of Winemaking, Alexandre Ponnavoy.
• There was a tiny harvest in 2018, with the first meaningful harvest taking place in 2019.
• A new winery was completed in 2024 and inaugurated by HRH The Duchess of Edinburgh.
• Classic Cuvée Edition II is built around the 2021 harvest with reserve wines from 2020 and 2019 (65% Pinot Noir, 25% Chardonnay, 10% Pinot Meunier). Aged 3 years on lees, it retains the Classic Cuvée’s trademark minerality and salinity, heightened by the added maturity of the vines.

In 2015, Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger and Patrick McGrath envisioned a joint venture between Champagne Taittinger and Hatch Mansfield to create a brand new, premium English sparkling wine. The team established three strict site selection criteria; any suitable land needed to be on chalk, south or southwest facing, and below 100 meters in altitude with natural shelter. England remains a marginal climate for grape growing, making site selection critical. From the outset, the search focused on Kent - "The Garden of England" - where arguably the best fruit is grown as it benefits from more sunshine hours than any other county in England.

In 2015, the team identified the ideal location in a beautiful fruit farm in Chilham, west of Canterbury, that was owned by third-generation fruit farmer Mark Gaskain. The deal was done, and that Autumn the creation of Domaine Evremond was announced at a press conference in Canterbury Cathedral, marking the first investment in the UK by a Champagne house. The venture was named after a Charles de Saint-Évremond (1613–1703), the man who introduced the early wines of Champagne to the court of Charles II and remains the only Frenchman buried in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey – a fitting homage to the friendship between the UK and France and the foundation of the Domaine Evremond project. Today, Domaine Evremond remains the only English Sparkling wine with a Champagne house involved from its inception and created from scratch (rather than simply purchasing an existing vineyard) – a significant investment focussed on absolute quality, friendship, and the pursuit of excellence.

By 2017, 21 hectares of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Pinot Meunier vines had been planted. The vineyard’s day-to-day management is overseen by Mark Gaskain and his team, under the supervision of Christelle Rinville, Taittinger’s Director of Viticulture. The first small crop was harvested in 2018, and the first meaningful crop followed in 2019. They were processed in the Domaine Evremond temporary winery, led by Taittinger’s Director of Winemaking Alexandre Ponnavoy. Since 2019, Christelle, Alexandre, and a dedicated team from Taittinger have travelled to Kent each harvest, demonstrating their unwavering commitment.

Today, over 60 hectares of vines have been planted. In 2022, construction began on a new winery, completed in August 2024, and on September 26th HRH The Duchess of Edinburgh officially opened the facility, an event that attracted significant media attention.

Vintage 2021:

Edition II is built around the 2021 harvest, with reserve wines from 2020 and 2019 adding layers of complexity to the blend. In spite of a colder, wetter growing season, the wine retains the essential identity sought from the outset: structure, a floral lift, and purity of fruit. 

It is precise and linear, with the Classic Cuvée’s trademark minerality and salinity - heightened by the added maturity of vines, now a year older. 

“Classic Edition II fully embraces this contrasting climate, where inland freshness meets maritime softness and coastal winds. It reveals the chalky soils of Chilham, scattered with flint, through a mineral, saline and intense expression, giving the wine a unique signature and a remarkable sense of verticality.” Alexandre Ponnavoy, Director of Winemaking, Champagne Taittinger

Domaine Evremond now presents the release of its second wine: Classic Cuvée, Edition II.

As indicated on the neck label, each annual release is numbered as a new edition, much like a book series - and, in Alexandre's own words, “each edition represents a new chapter in the story of the Domaine - always distinctive, yet unmistakably Evremond”. Edition II is built around the 2021 harvest, with reserve wines from 2020 and 2019 adding complexity to the blend (65% Pinot Noir, 25% Chardonnay, 10% Pinot Meunier). Despite a colder, wetter growing season, the wine retains structure, a floral lift and purity of fruit, with the Classic Cuvée's trademark minerality and salinity heightened by the vines' added maturity. The wine has matured for three years on the lees, with a dosage of 7g/L.

Speaking about the blend, Alexandre explains that each edition of the Classic Cuvée is built around a recent harvest, complemented by perpetual reserve wines that bring consistency and depth – a library he began building from the Domaine's very first production year in 2019, and which has continued to grow with every harvest since. This approach, he says, allows the wine to “express the Domaine's style consistently from one edition to the next, while remaining deeply respectful of the terroir” - the aim being to reveal the character of each vintage while preserving a clear, consistent house signature. Of Edition II specifically, Alexandre describes how it “fully embraces this contrasting climate, where inland freshness meets maritime softness and coastal winds”, revealing the chalky soils of Chilham, scattered with flint, “through a mineral, saline and intense expression, giving the wine a unique signature and a remarkable sense of verticality”.

Asked how Domaine Evremond compares to Champagne Taittinger, Alexandre is clear that the connection lies less in shared lineage than in shared standards: the strongest link between the two, in his view, is “the constant pursuit of quality and precision in the expression of their wines, whether in Champagne or in England”. Beyond that, he sees the two as distinct in character and philosophy - Champagne Taittinger built on decades of blending across a mosaic of terroirs, Domaine Evremond an estate wine in its own right, expressing its singularity through the chalky soils of Kent. For Alexandre, the ambition has always been to reveal that terroir “in the purest and most noble way possible” and to show that England can produce sparkling wines of outstanding quality with a distinctive signature all its own.

The first vines were planted in 2017, and Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier typically produce fruit of their finest quality between 15 and 25 years of age - meaning, as Alexandre points out, the Domaine's most refined expressions are still to come. He believes that through Editions I and II, the team have already shown it's possible to produce a sparkling wine that is “joyful, highly precise, mineral-driven, full of energy and beautifully expressive in its fruit”, with further gains in consistency and complexity expected as the reserve wine library grows and the vines mature. 

Champagne and southern England share the traditional method and the same three grape varieties, but growing conditions differ significantly: Champagne benefits from a continental climate and a diversity of soils, from the Kimmeridgian soils of the Côte des Bar to the chalk of the Sézannais and Côte des Blancs, while southern England has an oceanic climate with soils composed primarily of chalk and flint. Alexandre notes that adapting to this meant developing an entirely new viticultural approach, with harvest management and winemaking protocols tailored to manage the naturally high acidity and phenolic bitterness found in English vintages.

Importantly, Alexandre says the team approached Domaine Evremond without setting out to compare it to Champagne Taittinger or Domaine Carneros, Taittinger’s Napa Valley Estate, drawing instead on their expertise in viticulture, oenology and winery engineering to build the tools and facilities best suited to the Domaine's own vision. That creative freedom, he explains, allowed them to shape a stylistic, architectural, agronomic and oenological identity that is distinctly Domaine Evremond – not a copy of any other estate.

Arriving mid-late October 2026