Vineyards & Distilleries

I've added a page to the site with the vineyards and distilleries I have visited.

In 2016, when I moved into my building, I went to a wine tasting hosted by Oz Clarke. He used to be a TV wine taster, the BBC doesn't seem to do that kind of thing anymore.

He is a big personality, funny, good speaker, but the one thing I remember is his story about English sparkling wine. He said that going back 20 years or more there was a snobbery around English sparkling wine in that is was an inferior product and a bit of a joke that the English think they could grow a grape, let alone produce a champagne like product. No one was interested in consuming it.

He said that in fairness, perhaps some of the vineyards in England 20 years or so ago were in their early days and people were learning. But things have changed. He said that now, in blind tasting conducted in France by the classical and best champagne tasters, English sparkling wines come out on top and he explained why.

Firstly, its to do with the soil, especially in the Kent area of England. The Champagne region is north east of Paris and grows in a chalky soil in a geological area known as the Paris basin. That band of geology spreads through northern France and then you can pick it up again when you see the chalk in the white cliffs of Dover. The Paris basin then spreads through into southern England. So the soil conditions are right for the grape, they're identical to the Champagne region.

Then, the temperature has changed from 100 years ago, southern England is now permanently 2 degrees warmer than it was, which means it has an identical climate to the Champagne region in the early 1900's. The Champagne region is also 2 degrees warmer, which affects the grapes, they're now different to what they were. These subtle differences in temperature has a subtle affect on the grape, which in turn affects the taste, which in turn affects the product, which the best tasters can identify.

The knowledge and skills of English vineyard owners, the soil, the temperature, now means that English vineyards can hold their own against Champagne producers and in fact, land in Southern English is being purchased by the large Champagne houses to off set this problem. Juice can be taken back to whine houses in France and still classed as Champagne.

Obviously the name Champagne is protected, and that is a good thing in my view. It means that English sparkling doesn't have to try to be a product its not. It can stand apart from Champagne.

The French have a fantastic approach to food and farming and with wine production they are obsessive about following tradition. This has to be one of the many brilliant features of the French and one which sets them apart in a positive way from American culture. Something us English could certainly take on board a bit more.

But in terms of our wine production, it also means we can be more experimental, we do not need to pick at a certain time, or pick in a certain way, we can test out new and different ways of making a product, sometimes that won't be much good, but other times it could lead to a superior product.

For me, the vineyard visits are a way to shake off the lockdown cabin fever. I had stumbled across this website, the Wines of Great Britain site, a trade association for British wines, listing English vineyards and I was gobsmacked by the number in the UK and the number really close to Bristol. So I decided to make this the purpose of my trips out of Bristol to break lockdown.

My parents used to visit National Trust properties and churches and this is a great way of seeing a town or place in the UK. It gives you a target and a purpose for visiting and these central points will typically expose lots of other interesting things to see.

Churches let you sip the house wine, but thats not the National Trust thing, so I decided on Vineyards. Vineyard tours are already being featured regularly in The Times and The Guardian, so I'm sure it will be up there with other white middle class clichés soon, like wild swimming, but I don't care. I enjoy it, and like seeing too many churches and thinking they all seem the same, when vineyards become a bit samey, I will find something else, until then, I'll keep the page up to date with each new visit.