INDEX:
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Features:
History
Variety
Celebration
Not British!
Where to buy
Learning more
Links
Forum -
new!
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 9,229 visitors, 16,067
page views and 77,729 hits in Jan 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:
1 February 2007
© 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 |
| New Online Forum -
your chance to have your say about everything concerning English
Wine - click here |
Malcolm
Gluck - Complete pratt or English wine's best publicist?
Wine writer Malcolm Gluck has long been the bane of English
winemakers. Today - on the Today programme (BBC, Radio
4 FM) he did it again. His negative comments about English wine were
compounded by John Humphrys introduction of the item as being
abut "British wine" - which, as hopefully all visitors to
this website know (see our page confusion),
is neither English or even British but more "EU" - being
wine made in the UK from concentrate imported in bulk in tankers and
made from cheap grapes grown in various Mediterranean countries but
certainly not in England - in short, the ultimate "plonk".
What Malcolm Gluck was railing about on the Today
programme was that various English wines have been winning international
competitions against all-comers. When asked why he thought that the
judgement of around 30 Masters of Wine should be questioned he said
- and I paraphrase - "What do they know about wine?" and
inferred that the opinion of anyone off the street was better than
that of any Master of Wine. All very democratic you might think, but
he went on to say how outrageous it was that a sparkling wine produced
by Denbies vineyard at Dorking in Surrey should have beaten the best
champagnes in blind tastings to gain a gold medal - "How could
an English sparkling wine possibly be better than a "real"
champagne?" - and "it ought only to be regarded as a "cava"
or 'sparkling wine' ". How snobbish and elitist is that? Has
he swallowed entire the mystique manufactured by the marketers of
wines from Champagne? For my money, if 30 Masters of Wine, in blind
tastings, are judging some, not all, English wines to be better than
competitor wines from around the world, I'd say their judgement is
more likely to be right than a single self-opinionated and self-promoting
writer desperate for some cheap publicity by launching uninformed
and unjustified attacks on English wine. And Malcolm, for the record,
champagne is a sparkling wine. English sparkling wines
made by exactly the same method as is used in Champagne cannot be
called champagne (by EU law - which says only wine grown in the Champagne
region of France can be described as champagne and all other second
fermented wine must be described as "sparkling wine" - eat
your heart out Cheddar - I bet you wish you had this degree of protection
for your cheese name!).
What none of the contributors to the Today item
mentioned in the heat of verbal battle was that whilst the best of
English wines are superb and as good as or even better than the best
of the rest of the world, there are also some English wines which
are dreadful, some mediocre, some "average", some good,
some excellent - which is also true of the wines of France, Italy,
Spain, California, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, South
Africa etc. One of the roles of wine experts, such as Masters of Wine
like Jancis Robinson, is to help the rest of us find the wines worth
drinking without wasting time or money on the poor ones. Of course,
by visiting vineyards and tasting their products, one can make one's
own judgements and this has a lot to be said for it, but the expert's
judgement is a convenient short cut. On this Today item presenter
John Humphrys wasn't as well briefed or prepared as one imagines
he normally is - in introducing the speaker from Denbies he said they
were the biggest vineyard in England (true) and produced most of English
wine (not true). Although Denbies is very big by English standards
(at over 200 acres), there are now several thousand acres of English
vineyards, each recent year seeing vineyards equivalent in size to
Denbies being planted and totalling around 400 in number across England.
Thinking laterally, maybe the English wine industry
should perhaps be grateful to Malcolm Gluck because though he is a
self-opinionated uninformed wine snob he at least got English wine
on to the BBC's premier radio news programme and his demeanour on
air is very likely to have induced in listeners the reaction that
"if this pratt thinks English wine is rubbish it must be good
- let's try some"!
Bob Tarr, webmaster, www.english-wine.com - 2 June 2007 |
| 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 - email to
"webmail1" at "english-wine.co.uk". |
Can
we make it five?
English viticulturists seem to be beneficiaries of global warming
- the last four years were excellent for most English vineyards. Our
difficult climate brings out the best in vines and English wine has
the potential for great quality - but often quantity hasn't matched
quality, but the last few years have seen both quantity and quality.
This year, a fine, dry and sunny April gave an early boost to the
growing season but in many areas the summer was a bit of a wash-out,
though it has varied greatly from one locality to another. The 2007
vintage may itself vary greatly across the vineyards of England -
the quality of the 2007 vintage is likely to be good but with only
around 2m bottles of English wine being produced each year and its
reputation now good and growing, there may not be enough to go round
this year! |
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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