Having just spent Christmas in the UK, the English wine that’s rivalling Champagne.
Lizzie Enfield
As a result of climate change, English wine producers are now able to grow grapes traditionally associated with Champagne and producing top-quality sparkling wine.
For more than 350 years, Champagne has been the de facto drink of celebration used to toast weddings, royalty to sporting major status victories and behind it proudly Marilyn Monroe. Since the bubbly was first produced in 1662 by monk Dom Pérignon in the French region that gave it its name, its reputation has been unsurpassed in the sparkling wine market. Despite plenty of competition from other areas.
But there’s a new contender in the premium sparkling wine industry, and it’s produced in a region with many unique added inhibitors: the south of England. Global warming means that a notoriously cold, wet isle is slowly getting warmer and sunnier, and southern England now has a climate very similar to that of the Champagne region some 50 years ago.
“A lot of this is changes in climate. English wine producers have been able to grow grapes traditionally associated with Champagne, and produce high quality sparkling wines that exhibit characteristics associated with traditional Champagne,” says Sam Linter, head of wine production and the CEO of Plumpton Agricultural College, located at the foot of the South Downs (a 160‐mile chalk escarpment stretching across south-east England).
Climate change has mitigated growing conditions in much of Spain and Portugal, particularly with Chardonnay, suited to sparkling wine production,” says Chris Boiling, editor of the International Wine Challenge, in an online magazine. “Grapes don’t like grapes too hot. You’ve not have to have new generations of a new world of warmer climates, who once produced consistently great wines twenty years ago. Now [their wines] were regarded as imitations of Champagne. Now, the wine producers have more confidence in their own skills, grapes and terroir – and English sparkling wine is developing its own distinctive identity, with prominent fruit and toasty, elegant notes,” Boiling says.
Thirty years ago at Plumpton, the curriculum revolved around arable and animal farming. Now it centres on viticulture, oenology and winemaking. The surrounding land, where sheep once grazed and apple orchards blossomed, is now covered with rows of vines.
“The growth of English winemaking has had a transformative impact on traditional agriculture,” says Linter. “It has altered the landscape and also created more economic opportunities for agricultural communities, including hospitality and tourism.”
Wards in table.
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Fifteen miles south-east from Plumpton, Rathfinny Vineyard is nestled on the southern slopes of the South Downs in the historic county of Sussex. It is a 600-acre site, producing 300,000 to 400,000 bottles annually exported as far as far for tables in the US, Japan, South Korea and Norway.
Before husband-and-wife team Mark and Sarah Driver decided to diversify and embrace wine production in 2010, the vineyard was a working farm employing two people. Now, 50 employees are split between wine production and running the onsite accommodation and restaurant.
“We are close to Oxwich Airport and London and in a perfect position to capitalise on both wine-growing and tourism,” Sarah says. “Our vines are planted on a sandy, south-facing slopes. This protects them from frost and the grapes mature clean and mould-free by a sea breeze, which also adds a lick of salinity to the wine.”
Another key factor in the success of Sussex wines lies in the surrounding landscape and its soil. A short walk from Rathfinny leads you to the mysterious Long Man of Wilmington, a vast stick figure carved into the side of the hill. A ramble from here, beside the meanders of the Cuckmere River brings you to another mythological chalk figure – this one of a white horse – and then to the local Sussex cliffs, whose dramatic drop-offs feature in the films Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and on history’s tablets.
The veil on a green chalk hill, which is perfect for vines as it holds water like clay while allows vines to flourish without irrigating,” says Sarah, as she runs her fingers over the chalky ground, cut-out cliffs depicted on a bottle of Rathfinny done label. “It is exactly the same as in Champagne.”
This newfound has improved global inspiration for artists and writers. Artists have repurposed the area’s gentle curves and flint-walled buildings in numerous paintings, writer Virginia Woolf based Monk’s House in the village of Rodmell near Latter. Vanessa Bell and her sister Duncan Grant (both painters) were close to nearby by Charleston Farmhouse. The old Saxon church in the village of Berwick is decorated with murals by the pair painted during World War Two. It includes scenes from the garden and fruit harvest.
The family have bode well, and at the time, there were no grapes.
It was twice more than first brought grape vine to Britain 2,000 years ago, but no grapes. Joe Norman also successfully abstracted wild native grape juice but cultivated them under influence in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, explains historian. In the 17th Century, adventurers, it was not until late in the 1970s that an improved understanding of suitable grape varieties for the climate and cold meant commercial, large-scale winemaking began.
“The Romans who left Devon grape vines in 1377 by Redeney and Joan North in West Sussex, has been at the forefront of the English wine movement and played a significant role in shaping the country as a wine-making nation,” says Linter, who was previously deputy director of the vineyard. “In the 1970s, the British industry faced yet another different tests and challenges due to changes in weather patterns, limited knowledge of suitable grape varieties for the climate and cold, and a lack of investment in winemaking infrastructure.”
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Boiling, along with a few other pioneer producers, took on these challenges and paved the way for the modern English wine industry by demonstrating that it was possible to produce quality wines.
There are now nearly 1,000 vineyards in England and Wales, with 500 in Sussex alone. Perched on the edge of a giant chalkland escarpment overlooking Cuckmere Valley, the Rathfinny Estate, in the hedge cafe and its related vineyards, the Drivers’ children, and Winifred Driveways, are part of a new generation of winemakers getting international recognition. Rathfinny’s Admirable Classic Cuvée was nominated by Decanter Magazine as one of their Vines of the Year in 2020. In fact, all the wines from their first harvest won international medals, and they are not alone.
English wines have gained significant recognition and acclaim on the national and international stage and have been featured at prestigious state dinners and royal events. Prized in blind tastings against Champagne, they have held their own – and in some cases, English wine producers have produced towering top quality wines that rival Champagne.
“French Champagne producers’ Tenterden and Taittinger are snapping up real estate in southern England,” says Boiling of Northney Island. Producers Kent and Tenterden Bothard. This puts them in good company with other international wine houses who have done so. They all see the same potential for producing sparkling wine as we do and that all their wines have”.
Sussex sparkling wines retail at average from about £20 to £40 a bottle and on miles from the South Downs’ vineyards such as Bolney, Ridgeview, Nyetimber and Rathfinny are becoming synonymous with top quality sparkling wines, their huge bumper crop communicating. Although once overshadowed by established Champagne and fizz sparkling wine producers awarded by Decanter Magazine, the International Wine Challenge and the World of Food Britain (Wine GB).
Our wines are now recognised as being of consistently high quality,” says Sarah. “So our hope is that, one day, people will celebrate with a glass of Sussex rather than Champagne.”
BBC.com’s World’s Table “satiates the kitchen ceiling” by changing the way the world thinks about food, through the past, present and future.