INDEX:
Click on your choice
Features:
History
Variety
Celebration
Not British!
Where to buy
Learning more
Links
Vineyards:
Listing of vineyards
'Cornish gem'
- feature on Camel Valley Vineyard
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| Vineyards:
Want to be listed on the Number 1 English wine website?
- contact us (see foot of page for details) |
| We had 10,163 visitors, 23,399
page views and 84,555 hits in August 2008 |
| Questions
& advice: Due to the volume involved we no longer answer
individual requests for information or advice - sorry! Look around
our pages and you may well find what you are seeking! Or use our new
Forum to ask others for advice. |
This website was launched 9 December 1999
Latest development:
2 September 2008
© 1999-2008
All rights reserved
www.english-wine.com |
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Have you discovered
English wine?
Since before the Millennium this website has disseminated the good
news about English wine - how good, even superb, it can be. How a new
wave of English grape-growers and winemakers has raised standards and
increased variety (new whites, good reds, superb sparkling wines). We've
told the history of English wine, where you can buy it and which vineyards
you can visit....and we still are! It's been a labour of love, but if
it means you also discover English wine, it's been worth it!
Bob Tarr, webmaster |
Dreadful
summer, but what sort of vintage?
Summer 2008 is a timely reminder that not every year can be a viticulturist's
dream. With August rain much higher than normal and hours of sunshine
much lower, it will be a lucky vineyard indeed which manages to produce
a 2008 vintage of both quality and quantity. My guess, judging from
the state of play in my own modest vineyard in Cornwall (where the
summer has been very much worse than last year) is that quantity will
be modest but quality may be reasonable. It's always worth remembering
that the grapevine produces its best quality when things seem to be
against it. So it's too soon to write off 2008 as a bad job yet and
if we get a belated Indian Summer this month and maybe even in October
we may yet see a vintage worth remembering.
2 September 2008 |
Does
Prince Charles really put English wine in his car?
You may have seen or read the story that Prince Charles was said to
be running his 1970s Aston Martin (and other cars) on surplus "English"
wine. Some of the media managed to get the story right - they are
the ones which said "British" wine (that's the plonk made
in Britain from concentrated grape juice shipped in from cheap wine
producing areas). I don't think any English vineyard has been reduced
to converting its valuable English wine (that's wine made in England
from grapes grown in England) into bioethanol to bung into the Prince's
cars or anyone else's for that matter. And I guess that the Prince
is almost certainly too much of a wine connoisseur to tolerate such
a travesty anyway. See also our "Confusion"
page.
webmaster, 2 September 2008 |
| Key facts
about English wine |
| There are now around 400 English
vineyards producing around 2m bottles per year |
"Quality wines"
are subject to rigorous controls.
The quality of "Table wines" is not assured
but there are gems to be found |
Where's the biggest English
vineyard? Only 20 miles from London (Denbies, Dorking -
250 acres) |
| Whites - wide variety,
but traditional English whites have floral bouquets & high
acidity - very refreshing! |
Reds - Once thought impossible
- but it is and they vary from light, thru mellow and even full-bodied |
Sparkling - The great
success story - similar soils to champagne and edgier climate
mean truly great English sparkling wines - as evidenced in blind-tasting
international competitions where some English sparkling wines
now beat the best of Champagnes |
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A new way to buy English wine - online! Read all about buying online
on our Where to Buy? page, or
visit winehub now by clicking on logo |
Buying English wine the easy way
It used to be the case that buying English wine was one too easy -
you had a choice of buying the single choice which was all, more often
or not, that was on the shelves of your local supermarket or off-licence
or stocking up at the vineyard to ensure you got your favourite tipple.
Now with the advent of online merchants specialising in English wines
you are spoilt for choice, you can easily try a variety of English
wines and you can benefit from the merchants' expert advice and tasting
notes. Above and below this feature you will see advertisments of
two of these merchants - click on them to take you to their websites,
enjoy making your selections and within a few days you can be finding
out for yourself just how good English wines are now. |
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What's
your favourite?
Do you have a favourite English wine? Is it one of the traditional
whites with floral bouquet and high acidity? Or one of the new-wave
whites? Or a mellow red? Or a champagne beating English sparkling
wine?
Let us know your favourites so we can pass on your recommendations
to all who visit this website. Send us your views - and, if you
have them, a photo or two of you and your favourite wine - e-mail:
click here |
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Three
Choirs Vineyards (left) is just one of the English vineyards you can find
on this website -please visit it both in our directory of vineyards
and in the real world - it's a great day out with a visitor centre and vineyard
and winery tour, a wine & gift shop and AA Two Rosette restaurant open
for lunches and dinners. You can even stay there in the on-site hotel and
really immerse yourself in the romance of the vine (if the romance is of
a different kind you can get married there too!). Visit our directory of
vineyards - click here