It is a blisteringly cold day when I arrive at North Devon’s Saunton Sands Hotel, but its iconic location — atop a cliff that overlooks the Saunton Sands beach; named one of the most picturesque beaches in the UK — tempts me to take a walk. Invigorated by the cool breeze on my face and the symphony of the crashing waves, I make my way to the dining room to feast on a fleshy, charred sea bass served atop a lemon brine risotto. It has been a week of travel, sightseeing and discovering the UK beyond London. But my greatest discovery, I realise, at dinner, is the region’s wine.

View of the Langham vineyard in early June 2024 | Photo Credit: Lara Jane Thorpe

Sharpham’s Dart Valley Reserve is a tart, peachy white wine with a rounded palate and just a hint of spice at the end. It pairs superbly with the fish and leads me down a delicious rabbit hole. “For hundreds of years, we’ve celebrated our special occasions by drinking French Champagne and Old World wines. But with vineyards now dotted across hills in the UK, local wines are emerging as worthy contenders,” explains Kelly Brend of the Brend Collection, the parent company of Saunton Sands, over dinner.

The wine we are drinking, Sharpham’s Dart Valley Reserve 2022 has won several awards, including a gold in the Sommelier Wine Awards in 2019. Sharpham wine has been using grapes from the vines at Sandridge Barton, located in Devon’s Dart Valley for over 40 years. I learn from the sommelier that much of the vineyard is planted with Madeleine Angevine, a grape varietal originally from the Loire Valley, but which seems very happy in its South Devon home, where the grapes enjoy the mild temperate coastal climate.

Head Winemaker Tommy Grimshaw in the winery | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Sharpham is not the only winemaker making wines while the sun shines. In recent decades, climate change has provided better growing conditions for grapes in England. Quality has improved, with wines from the UK winning prestigious awards. As a result, viticulture is now Britain’s fastest-growing agricultural sector and the UK is planting vines more quickly than most of the world’s biggest wine-producing countries. According to an industry report by Wines of Great Britain (WineGB), wine production is expected to reach between 25 and 29 million bottles by 2032.

Interestingly, Taittinger and Pommery, two of France’s best-known Champagne houses, have recently bought land and planted vines in England, while the world’s biggest sparkling wine company, Henkell Freixenet, acquired an English wine estate, Bolney, in 2022. And just last year, Jackson Family Wines, a multinational with interests in California, Bordeaux, South Africa, and Australia, confirmed plans to make a range of still and sparkling wines on British soil.

Langham’s core range of wine | Photo Credit: MATT AUSTIN

What’s climate change got to do with it?

A Columbia Climate School study published in 2020 warned that the number of regions growing certain grapes will shrink by more than half if global temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This change in temperature causes grapes to mature too quickly, thus impacting the ratio of acidity and sugar, thereby changing the taste of a wine. Research published in the journal Oeno One predicts that climate change will increasingly allow UK winemakers to grow varieties of grapes such as Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Riesling and Semillion, which have previously been extremely difficult or impossible to cultivate in the British climate. 

But it would be a fool’s errand to attribute the fillip that English wines have seen of late to climate change alone. The wines are wowing enthusiasts world over, thanks to the efforts of enterprising winemakers in the region, whose labour is now reaping great benefits. The region is best known for its sparkling wines; almost three-fourth of all wine production in the UK is bubbly. At the prestigious Decanter World Wine Awards last year, five gold medals went to vineyards based in Hampshire: Candover Valley Wines’ Brook Brut NV; Hambledon Vineyard’s Premier Cuvée Brut NV; and Raimes Classic Brut 2018. The other two sparkling wines to achieve gold were given to producers in Kent: Woodchurch Classic Brut 2017, and Chapel Down’s Kit’s Coty Coeur De Cuvée Extra Brut 2016. Several silver and bronze medals were awarded to viticulturalists in Cornwall, Staffordshire, Shropshire and Essex, totalling the UK’s wins to 143 medals, pitching it against some of the most famous wine-making countries.  

British Airways is the only airline in the world to have a full-time Master of Wine on board | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

British Airways’ Master of Wine, Tim Jackson attributes this success to several factors. “Firstly, we’re planting the right grape varieties: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Meunier, the three Champagne grape varieties. The second factor is the fact that we’re planting the grapes in the same geology. If you look at the southeast of England particularly, there’s this rich brown soil, and everything below it is brilliant white chalk. So that goes and hits the White Cliffs of Dover and then goes under the English Channel. The next place it turns up is Champagne. So we have the same geology in parts of southeastern England as the Champagne region in France. So we’ve got, the same grape varieties, the same soil and same production method. We’re not yet at the same level of expertise, but as the market grows, more and more wine talent is coming into the UK.”  British Airways is the only airline in the world to have a full-time Master of Wine on board. Tim is adding some sparkle into their business and first class experience with a rotation of all-British bubbles.

Passengers in British Airways’ business class can enjoy four British sparkling wines from four different houses: Digby Fine English, Wiston Estate, Simpsons, and Balfour, while first class passengers can sip glasses from England’s Hattingley Estate. Hampshire-based Balfour’s Rosé de Noirs is a British Airways exclusive, a light sparkling made from red grapes made exclusively for the airline. Tim weighed in on the trials, tasting the wine midflight to ensure the final version would work well at a variety of altitudes. “Our ability to create these wines and shine a light on local wines is a reflection of where British sparkling wine is,” he says, referring to how producers are finally meeting demands.

For context, the UK has a rich history of winemaking: “Vines have been grown in England since Roman times for winemaking,” explains Sian Roberts, the founder ofLoving Welsh Food, who organises entertaining local tours across Wales, full of delicacies, anecdotes, and gorgeous sights. “With the First World War, however, the need for crops and food took priority over wine production, thus decimating an industry that was already beleaguered due to crop epidemics and infestations.” Sian, who has been organising tours for more than a decade tells me that over the years, interest in vineyard tours has been growing. “Tourists from bigger wine-drinking countries such as France and Italy are curious to taste Welsh wines but it’s also local tourists who are surprised to discover Wales as a wine-producing region.”

Gusbourne Estate, Ashford  | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Private efforts

As per Tommy Grimshaw, head winemaker at Langham Wine Estate in Dorchester, “the best way to get people to appreciate and understand our wines is through tastings.” In 2020, Langham won the prestigious IWSC Trophy for Sparkling Wine Producer of the Year. While Tommy notes that climate change has helped swing some bubbly success their way, he is conscious of it too: “As local winemakers, we need to be careful to not accelerate climate change with irresponsible practices. Langham is now focussing its efforts on building a new winery that will be entirely powered by solar panels and is experimenting with techniques to reuse sparkling wine bottles to help cut down the estate’s carbon footprint. 

While challenges such as high land and production costs remain, Tommy says that all the attention the local wine industry has received in the recent past is helping — this year, they have received applicants from India, South Africa, and parts of Europe. “The more diverse our expertise is, the richer the industry becomes,” he explains. “ English wines are moving now from a novelty to a force to reckon with. But we don’t want people to buy our wines just because it’s English, but because it’s simply really good wine.”