What A Change Around For English Vineyards – Disaster To Vintage In One Year

What a difference a year makes. Last October, the papers were full of doom and gloom about the prospect of there being any meaningful harvest for the increasingly important English wine industry due to the exceptionally poor summer. Indeed, at about that time, one of the leading award winning vineyards, Nyetimber in West Sussex, had made the “exceedingly difficult” decision to scrap its entire 2012 harvest, a pretty monumentous step from the producers who had provided the wine for the Queen’s barge during the Jubilee.

English Vineyards Set To Expand

Fast forward nine months to today, where the same papers are reporting that growers throughout the important wine producing areas such as Kent and Sussex, are now quietly saying that if the  weather remains helpful for the rest of the summer, then the vintage of 2013 could be one of the best over recent years.

Although the weather over the last few years has proved disappointing to say the least, the average temperatures are generally on the increase, and it seems likely that we will be seeing more vineyards established in places where soil constituency and temperate conditions prevail.

There are now some 400 vineyards throughout England and Wales, covering approximately 3,500 acres, and that number is growing. Sparkling wine has made great inroads into world markets, and as long ago as 2007, the Theale Vineyard Sparkling Chardonnay 2003 beat off stiff competition from fine Champagnes and top sparkling wines to make it into the world’s Top Ten Sparkling Wine at the world’s only dedicated sparkling wine competition, French-based Effervescents du Monde (Sparkling Wines of the World).

There are even moves to start growing wine in Scotland, although as with the industry as a whole, there is some way to go. Wines grown in this country still account for a minute portion of the domestic market, and perhaps it is only as the economies of scale come into play that greater inroads will be made.

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