I’m gazing down a slope of chalky soil that I used to race across as a kid… pasture and sheep and my dog Chunky, trailing away to the old Elham Valley train line. That was then. And now? Row upon row of proud, upright Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vines, each boasting fruit ripened in the glow of a golden autumn day. These grapes will make wine as good as Champagne. And these grapes are grown at Simpsons’ Wine Estate, almost within earshot of Canterbury Cathedral’s bells.
This scene repeats itself all over southern England and, increasingly, in the west, in Wales, in East Anglia and even in the Midlands up to Yorkshire.
In this challenging world of ours, which 2022 has revealed in all the blunt savagery of global warming and climate change, there is at least one fragile but glittering silver lining: the vineyards, wineries find green – in the vineyards of Kent and Sussex, Hampshire and Dorset, Essex and Suffolk. Refreshing splashes of green amidst the exhausted land around. The grape varieties of Champagne and Chablis and Burgundy, flourishing in Albion.
