Emma Rice to work as consultant for burgeoning English wine industry

By James Bayley

Published: 17 April, 2023

One of the UK’s most reputable winemakers, Emma Rice has set up her own winemaking consultancy company to help further advance the burgeoning UK wine industry. Rice will provide expertise in winery design, equipment sourcing, sensory evaluation and wine style strategy as part of her consultancy offering.

A graduate of the BSc in Viticulture & Oenology at Plumpton College in 2006, Rice has been at the forefront of the English winemaking industry with Wines of Great Britain as the immediate past chair of the Winemaking Working Group for many years. She was also involved in WineGB’s recent PDO/PGI regulation revisions for English Sparkling Wine.

Further still, Rice was a director and head winemaker at Hattingley Valley for 14 years whilst also running her wine analysis laboratory, Custom Crush UK. Overseeing the growth of Hattingley to become one of the largest wineries in the UK, Rice made wine not only for the brand but also for many other vineyards from Hampshire and surrounding counties. Winning multiple awards for her wines as well as those of her clients, she was responsible for producing 30-40 different cuvées each year from anything between 200 and 700 tonnes of fruit each harvest.

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Rice’s first client is one of the original pioneers of English wine, Breaky Bottom Vineyard, established in 1974, and which has run with what she describes as "a single-minded determination" by Peter Hall ever since. Rice will be helping Hall to take Breaky Bottom into the future whilst remaining true to his original ethos of letting the vines and terroir of that valley in the South Downs speak through the wine produced.

Hall was one of Rice’s original laboratory clients back in 2008, and she has been instrumental in ensuring the quality of his wines ever since.

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