As many as 22m bottles of English wine were produced from 2023’s harvest – a 60pc rise compared with 10 years ago. There are now more than 1,000 vineyards across the UK. Sales of English wine rose 10pc in 2023, according to WineGB.
One effect of the boom is that land values are soaring. Even still, for French champagne makers, it is still significantly cheaper than expanding in their native region.
“The value of land [in Champagne] is so high, it’s like, €1m [£850,000] a hectare,” says Ed Mansel Lewis, head of viticulture at property firm Knight Frank. “Whereas here, it’s probably £60k a hectare.”
The price of land is “not something that is particularly off-putting for us,” says Copestick.
With traditional agriculture struggling in the wake of the pandemic, many English farmers are only too happy to sell up. The numbers who can sell their land are growing by the day too.
“We’re just doing a model at the moment where we’re working out what the future sites will be,” says Lewis. “I think it will creep into Cambridgeshire. I think it will creep into Oxfordshire. And I think it will go further west in Hampshire.”
Chapel Down, the UK’s largest winemaker, last month put itself up for sale in a move it hopes will raise as much as £30m to expand, just seven months after it listed on the Alternative Investments Market.
This is not to say making wine in England is without challenges. “Outside the land, everything is more expensive,” says McGrath. “The yield that you get per acre is certainly a third of what you get in Champagne. It’s much, much lower because the climate changes very frequently. We get sun and rain five times a day.”
As a result, English wine is expensive. According to Circana data, the average price of a bottle of English sparkling wine in the supermarkets is just under £22. Producers are not keen to go any lower lest it lose its premium reputation.
While English wine is in the ascendancy, McGrath stresses the industry is still in its infancy.
“It will only get better. Because as the vines get older, we will work out which bits of the vineyard are better for which individual grape variety.”
Even the likes of Philippe Schaus at Moët Hennessy may come around in time.
