Champagne all round: the French invasion of English vineyards

Asked whether he would ever consider a move into English wine, the boss of Moët Hennessy turned his nose up. 

“There’s much more to a category like champagne than just latitude,” Philippe Schaus sniffed in 2022.

Such snobbery was once commonplace, with British wine seen as the uncultured cousin of Continental houses despite just hundreds of miles separating Champagne from the UK’s wine counties in the south.

Yet times, like the climate, are changing. Schaus now looks increasingly alone in his views. His rivals have ploughed millions into producing wine in England amid an explosion in British viticulture. 

In September Taittinger, one of France’s best-known houses, will launch the first wines from its Domaine Evremond vineyard in Chilham, Kent.

Named after a 17th century French author credited with popularising champagne in England, Charles de Saint-Evremond, the wine is the product of almost a decade of work and around £15m of investment from Taittinger and its UK business partner, the wine seller Hatch Mansfield.

“English wine was taken as a bit of a joke 30 years ago – now, it definitely is not,” says Patrick McGrath, Hatch Mansfield’s managing director.

Taittinger is not the only champagne giant spending serious money on English wine. Pommery, too, has begun making wine in Hampshire. 

At least one further champagne house is currently understood to be in talks to acquire English land.

It reflects growing excitement surrounding English wine. Warmer temperatures caused by climate change have turned certain parts of England into ideal territory for making wines. 

In Kent, for instance, the chalky soil found in its hills and fields is said to be strikingly similar to that found in Champagne. 

“One of the beauties of English sparkling wine is the acidity. It’s slightly racier than champagne,” says McGrath. “Champagne is a bit riper and fatter.”

As conditions are improving in England, they are declining in France. 

Champagne producers have been hit by shortages over recent years, causing them to restrict supplies to many of their customers.

“They couldn’t supply all of the customers,” says Robin Copestick, who runs the UK arm of Spanish cava business Freixenet. “We have a business called Slurp that buys champagne, and our allocations of famous champagne houses were reduced by 75pc.”

McGrath says: “I see our guys down in the south of France, where it’s 35 to 40 degrees in the summer, and they’re really struggling to keep their alcohols below 15pc.

“There are no winners in climate change, but English wine is probably on the right side.” 

In September, Domaine Evremond’s first batch of wines will go on sale at around £50 per bottle. As well as planting and growing the vines, an enormous visitor centre and wine storage facility are under construction.

Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, Taittinger’s chief executive, saw the potential of English wine early on. He bought Domaine Evremond in 2015 and the first vines were planted in 2017. 

While he was one of the first, England’s improving viticulture has not been kept a secret for long.

Jackson Family Wines from California has begun planting vineyards in Essex, while Henkell Freixenet, owner of Freixenet Cava, has snapped up Sussex’s Bolney Wine Estate. 

“We wanted somewhere that had winemaking and hospitality attached to it because we see tourism and hospitality as being a very big source of growth,” says Copestick.

Sussex, where Bolney is based, is the heart of England’s winemaking boom and a culture of wine tourism is already developing, with tourists visiting the vineyards as they would in South Africa, California or Tuscany. 

Awards are piling in. Chapel Down’s Rosé Brut, for instance, was named one of the world’s top 50 wines earlier this summer, netting a first for an English winemaker. 

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.