Sparkling future ahead for English wine

Reuters

EXCITING TIME: No longer the butt of dinner party jokes, English wine sales are going from strength to strength.

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It's competing on a par with the best in the world, upmarket British retailer Waitrose said sales of it are growing 120 percent a year and farmers are ripping out other crops to make...English wine.

No longer the butt of dinner party jokes, although still a minnow in a very large pond, English wine is now being taken seriously in some important quarters. In the past few years it has won international awards, mainly in the sparkling categories, with some even rivaling Champagne.

"There's certainly a real supply and demand scenario in favor of suppliers, the future is very bright," said Simon Field, Master of Wine and buyer at wine merchant Berry Bros. and Rudd.

Only a few years ago, producing wine in England was just a romantic pastime, done on a small scale by people who simply enjoyed growing grapes - those days are long gone with commercial demand for English vintages outpacing production.

England currently makes around 3 million bottles a year and wine growers estimate that number will quadruple in the next few years.

"We are New Zealand in the 1980s really, but we have one thing going against us - their climate is more benign than ours, so we will expand at a slower rate, but we are at that birth point if you like," Bob Lindo, Chairman of the UK Vineyards Association and owner of Camel Valley vineyard in Cornwall, southwest England told Reuters.

The award-winning Ridgeview vineyard in Sussex, southern England, plans to up production to 300,000 bottles by 2010, from its current 60,000 by planting 65 more acres of grapes.

"It's really exciting times. It's just gone from strength to strength," said Mardi Roberts, Marketing and Sales Manager at Ridgeview.

Farmers are increasingly realizing the benefit of investing in the English wine industry. The National Farmers Union said that each year 494 acres of farmland is converted to vineyards. On average an acre of wheat will earn a farmer 300 pounds ($594.9), but an acre of grapes will earn 5,000 pounds.

One acre costs anywhere between 50,000 pounds and 125,000 pounds in southern England.

An EU planting ban exemption for English and Welsh vintners approved just before Christmas will only serve the bolster the fledgling industry in Britain. EU agricultural ministers granted the exemption in the complicated review of wine regulations because they weren't asking for any subsidies, unlike wine-growers in many other member nations.

"We are a growing vibrant example of what's needed in the European Union," said Lindo "We don't need subsidies," he said.

Right now less than one percent of wine drunk in England is English wine, meaning the potential for growth is massive.

The suitability of soil in the south, plus increased technical know-how unimpeded by the constraints of tradition is even proving attractive to French vineyards. Some French vintners are said to be looking to getting in on the act.

"It's a certainty within the next two, five or seven years that French companies will certainly start planting in southern England," Online wine magazine Decanter.com Editor Adam Lechmere told Reuters. "They've been sniffing around for so long and come so close it."

Lechmere said the only reason a purchase had not yet been made was due to planning technicalities, not suitability.

"It would certainly be a coup for French vineyard to be first to grow sparkling wine in England," he said.

If the efforts of one Briton in France are successful, then even some French customers will be savoring English bubbly instead of their beloved Champagne.

Paul Tracy, owner of Fine Wine World which imports foreign wines into France said the quality of some English sparkling wines is excellent.

He's in negotiations with Ridgeview to import their sparkling wine and is convinced even the French will like it.

"I am absolutely certain once we get these wines into stock that they will do well. People will want to confound their friends by serving English sparkling wine."

- Reuters