From Obscurity to Premier Cru
By Steve Sharp
Wine drinking was a habit only for the elite in Britain, but an everyday necessity for our French and European cousins.
In the sixties, cheap, semi-sweet drinks such as ‘Babycham’ and ‘Cherry B’ took over from sherry and eventually Portuguese ‘Mateus Rose’. So exotic was this wine considered that people saved the bottles to turn into table lamps!
Then came the German ‘Blue Nun’, French ‘Hirondelle’ and Italian ‘Asti Spumante’.
With the advent of cheap foreign travel tastes became more adventurous and eclectic, and growth in wine consumption has increased unabated ever since.
Your average Brit now drinks 120 bottles a year of the stuff with Boomers leading the pack at 38%. But we still consume less than the French, German and Italians, with Latvians holding the world record.
Wine making in the UK dates back to Roman times, with history of wine drinking likely to go back even further.
In 1478 George, Duke of Clarence famously drowned in a vat of Malmsey, an expensive sweet wine.
The Doomsday book records 42 vineyards across England and Wales, as well as mentioning “Nitimbreha”, from which Sussex producer Nyetimber takes its name.
Despite a history of viticulture going back thousands of years, the UK wine industry is still in its infancy but is growing at a rapid pace.
Today there are almost 1,000 vineyards across Great Britain, with more being planted every year. Hectarage has increased 74% over the last five years.
English wines are going from strength to strength, with sparkling wines often coming out ahead of champagnes in prestigious tastings. In recent years, warmer summer is have seen still wines improving too.
While the rainfall in July may have been unwelcome to some, it came at the right time for wine producers in England, who are now predicting bumper harvests after perfect weather this year.
In The FT magazine recently, Master of Wine and “most respected wine writer in the world’ Jancis Robinson answered 121 questions on the subject.
Number 111 was, “Is England the new Champagne?”
Her reply was a little surprising.
“There's no doubt about it that, along with Burgundy, Champagne is the region most demonstrating the effects of climate change. Acid levels have been plummeting and the grapes tend to get much riper than they used to. That's affecting the taste of champagne, so far for the better actually, but that won’t continue forever. There are certain aspects in which England is indeed the new Champagne. It is making good quality counterparts. However, the tabloid stories about Champagne producers invading England are probably a bit overstated.”
Since, as an investment wine attracts no capital gains tax (on account of the fact that it is a perishable commodity), perhaps it’s time to squirrel away a few cases of Chateau Romford.
Steve