English wine dares to be different
This English Wine Week sees our winemakers shrugging off economic and weather challenges to make better wine than ever. Plus: what I'm drinking in Athens
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Our surroundings feel improbable as I stand with Sergio Verrillo in his Blackbook Winery: under a railway arch in an industrial estate in Battersea, on a wet, very cold June morning. As we survey the cramped stacks of barrels and fermentation vessels around us, Verrillo admits: “Last year broke me a bit – it was lot of winery Tetris, pumping wine in and out to make space.” And yet not only does he manage to produce around 30,000 bottles a year, but Verrillo crafts some seriously good wine – and innovative too, such as his I’d Rather Be A Rebel rosé, made from Essex Pinot Noir and matured in a mixture of oak barrels and tanks.
It’s this spirit of experimentation that is one of the hallmarks of English wine today. On a visit to Gusbourne Estate in Kent a couple of months back, Vineyard Manager John Pollard showed me how they have taken up the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation’s One Block Challenge, trialling regenerative methods that prioritise soil health. So they plant cover crops, minimise tractor passes to stop the soil being compacted, and use biological sprays to elicit a defensive response to various pests from the vines. It’s just a first step towards more sustainable winemaking – but still further than the large majority of Champagne producers are prepared to go.
And this week – officially English Wine Week – saw the third edition of Brit-Nat, a festival at urban winery Numbers Wine, in Bethnal Green. It featured no fewer than 70 English and Welsh wines in the light, gently sparkling pét-nat style. Organiser Tim Wildman MW told The Drinks Business website: “English sparkling wine is a rich person’s game… If you’re young and want to get into the industry, you can’t play that game, but you can buy a couple of tonnes of fruit from someone and make a pét-nat.”
Such openness to new ideas – and a lack of the kind of restrictions posed by appellation rules elsewhere in Europe – is helping English wine expand and adapt in a challenging environment. Not only are wine sales down globally, buffeted by economic uncertainty and changing consumer tastes. Despite the changes wrought by climate change, our weather means making wine in England remains a risky business.
Wildly unpredictable weather translates to huge swings in grape yields, although the best producers are getting better at making good wines even in poor years like 2024. In that year, wet and cool, just 10.7 million bottles were produced, against 2023’s hot, bumper harvest making almost 22 million. Cool years have knock-on effect too, because the previous season partly determines vines’ development and the number of bunches of fruit the following year. So even though 2025 was warm, with harvests starting weeks early, England and Wales made just 16.5 million bottles. And such macro figures obscure the daily weather dramas affecting English growers, from early frosts to torrential rain.
At least this year is looking more promising, following a hot May and a scorching end to June. Ruth Simpson, co-owner of Simpson Wine Estate, says that “yields are definitely looking healthy. With the main flowering in full flow this week we’ll be looking at harvesting 90 to 100 days from now.” As ever with British weather forecasts, that comes with big caveats, notably the risk of heavy summer rain, a growing threat in recent years. As Simpson points out, already this year, “we had seven frost events between late April and early May, with frost fans at work in the Roman Road [vineyard] and the whole team out lighting candles in Railway Hill [vineyard].”
Wendy Outhwaite, co-owner of Ambriel, Sussex, adds: “Although we personally had no frost problems, I know some people lost a lot – my understanding is 40 per cent loss was common. So, despite being set up perfectly by last year, if people got frosted they will have fewer bunches and later ripening.”
Commercially, there are producers making a profit in English wine, including Simpson’s and Ambriel. Some predictions last year of looming disaster due to oversupply have proven overblown, though there are still troubling whispers of deep discounting to supermarkets among the bigger players. One of England’s biggest and best-known producers, Ridgeview, went into administration last September. However, it was bought in February this year by an investor consortium led by The Quantum Beverage Company; operations have not been interrupted, while co-founder and head winemaker Simon Roberts remains in place. And still England’s vineyards keep expanding, with the overall area planted up fivefold since 2005 – the opposite to the trend in most wine regions from Bordeaux to Australia.
A key sticking point for many British consumers remains price: these are fairly expensive wines, and that isn’t going to change. English production costs are high, added to by harvest variability. What’s more, around three quarters of production is now sparkling, tying up stock for much longer periods prior to release than for still wines. That said, at least many smaller, boutique producers, not really going head-to-head with Champagne, still manage to sell their wine. And exports remain strong for many quality producers.
Most of them supplement that income through tourism, as essential a part of their business model as it is for many Californian wineries, albeit often conducted under greyer skies. The most recent figures from industry body WineGB show that English and Welsh wineries hosted 1.5 million visits in 2024, up by more than half on 2022. Last month saw the launch of a new dedicated smartphone app, the UK Vineyard Guide, designed to make exploring the English and Welsh wine country easier. It includes information on more than1,100 vineyards nationwide, including an interactive map and searchable vineyard listings, as well as editorial content on places, people and regions.
But ultimately, English wine’s future evidently stands or falls on the quality of what’s in the bottle. And while there are number of intriguing trends – such as the craze for pét-nat wines in garish bottles – for me the most important emerging development remains quality still wines.
A striking number of still wines were on show at a tasting earlier this month in Chelmsford, Essex, all of them from the nearby Crouch Valley. This warmest and driest corner of England has in fact long been a source of reliably ripened grapes for winemakers across the country, for instance Lyme Bay in Devon, though rarely acknowledged on their labels (I wrote about the emergence of the Crouch valley here.) The difference now is not just galloping improvements in quality, but also recognition of the Crouch as the nation’s premier source of still wines.
Such is the critical consensus now on the best of these that it’s hard to remember how outlandish the idea seemed until only fairly recently. Sergio Verrillo says he became convinced of the potential of English still wines by data on microclimates that he saw 15 years ago while studying winemaking at Sussex’s Plumpton College. But he says that when he first went looking for jobs and told wine producers, “English still wine’s the future”, potential employers were unimpressed, simply telling him he was wrong.
Now the majority of his still wines are made from Essex grapes, their vineyards all identified on the labels. He grins: “I’m just stubborn.” But he adds, “a lot has changed in the English wine scene in the last 20 years. The competitive landscape has been split open by the expansion of the industry. It’s more inclusive now.”
Nevertheless, says Janine Bunker, co-owner of leading Crouch Valley producer Danbury Ridge, “people are really taken off guard” by the quality of her still Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs. “Imagine a cart horse and you take the cart off and train it as a racehorse. Now we’re catching up with the racehorses.” At last month’s London Wine Fair’s “Greatest Chardonnay Showdown”, a double-blind tasting featuring high-end Chardonnays from across the globe, Danbury Ridge’s Octagon Block Chardonnay 2023 came third, behind wines from iconic Australia producers Tolpuddle and Vasse Felix and ahead of Domaine Henri Boillot’s Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru 2022 (in fifth place).
As a winemaker in an up-and-coming region of Spain once told me, “in Bordeaux they’ve found a winning formula and can stick with it – but we need to try new things to find our way.” That is what is happening in England now – and our wine scene is all the more exciting for it.
Six English wines to try
Gusbourne Rosé 2020, Kent (sparkling) – made from a majority of Chardonnay, the fresh strawberry fruit has a slight creaminess to it, despite being underpinned by firm acidity. Long and elegant – very classy (The Whisky Exchange, De Burgh Wine Merchants, Hedonism, from £53.95.)
Oxney Classic Brut NV (sparkling) – one of England’s relatively few certified organic vineyards, this Sussex producer makes a very good range of both still and sparkling wines. This is their standard sparkling cuvée: Pinot-Noir dominant, lovely bready/brioche aromas and flavours, creamy fruit and crisp acidity, elegant. Good value for an English sparkler of this quality (Vintage Roots, Wild & Lees, Cépage and elsewhere, from £36.)
Blackbook Winery Pygmalion Chardonnay 2022 – made from Crouch Valley grapes, this has had two years in 40 per cent new oak barrels, which shows in its weight and structure. Citrussy acidity and depth, a complex Chardonnay, pretty serious stuff (direct from Blackbook, or from Woodwinters, Dvine Cellars, from £29.50. Other vintages available from Blackbook.)
The Heretics “Deluxe Seven” Chardonnay 2023 - another impressive still Chardonnay from Crouch Valley-sourced fruit: crisp, bright, fresh with nice balance (direct from The Heretics or from Davy’s, Ad Hoc Wine Shop, from £35.)
Vagabond English Rosé 2024 – the Vagabond chain of wine bars also have their own urban winery at the Canada Water branch, which is well worth a visit. This rosé is (I think) made from grapes from Oxfordshire and Sussex as well as Essex, mostly Pinot Noir plus a little of the earlier-ripening Pinot Noir Précoce. Fragrant, lots of red fruit but crisp and dry, fruity: a very decent English still rosé (Vagabond, £25.)
Danbury Ridge Pinot Noir 2023, Essex – arguably England’s best still Pinot Noir, and certainly one of its most celebrated, this wine from a warm vintage boasts fragrant red fruit notes along with denser, more intense cherry fruit. A firm structure and crunchy grip to it: lovely now but will be better with time. Serious Pinot. The newly released 2024, which I just tasted in Chelmsford, is even better (The Wine Society, Brunswick Fine Wines, NYWines and elsewhere, from £40.)
What I’ve been drinking this week - in Athens
I’m Athens this week and next, engaged in yet another masochistic (and doomed) attempt to improve my Greek – and exploring the city’s restaurants and wine bars. These are some of the wines I’ve enjoyed so far:
Moropoulos Mantinia 2024 – classic, fragrant Moschofilero from the Peloponnese, floral with rose petal notes, citrussy-fresh and bright The same producer’s rosé from the same (slightly pink) grape is excellent too. I drank this by the glass at Xartes café’s good new wine bar across the street, Cava, a newcomer to my favourite Exarchaeia neighbourhood (both wines are in Lea & Sandeman, £19.95 or £17.50 when you mix any 12 bottles.)
Idaia “Ocean” Thrapsathiri 2025, PGI Crete – Thrapsathiri is one of Crete’s many local grapes, making crisp and herby whites, though it’s often blended. This is just about the perfect Greek white for me: herby, citrussy, fresh with zippy acidity but some weight to it too (the 2025 doesn’t appear to be in the UK yet but the 2024 is at All About Wine, Wine Republic and elsewhere, from £17.89.)
Oenops “Apla” rosé 2024, Drama – from way up north, east of Thessaloniki, comes this rose from a blend of local red grapes Limniona, Xinomavro and Mavroudi. Quite a deep pink, fresh red fruit and a hint of tomato; quite concentrated, with some length to it. Lovely (All About Wine, NY Wines, Banstead Vintners and elsewhere, from £14.69.)
I was recently blown away by Solstice, the sparkling wine from Danbury Ridge. Complex and rich and with less acidity than many other English sparklings. Do you like Sugrue's still wines? I think his Bonkers Chardonnay bears comparison to the Danbury Ridge still wines.