4 1GT Thursday October 15 2020 | the times
the table
explaining that English sparkling wine,
even using the same grapes (a mix of
pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot
meunier), the same soil and the same
methods will always be slightly
different from champagne; something
possibly lighter, less creamy than the
stuff made in France.
“Here you have the huge influence
of the Channel. Here it is a maritime
climate; in Champagne it’s continental.
We want to discover what is the
personality of wines here in Kent.”
Yet if it’s not the same, why choose
a distinctly French name for the wine
rather than an English-sounding one,
as Chapel Down, Gusborne or
Nyetimber — the established UK
wineries — have done?
He explains how his chairman,
Pierre-Emmanuel, is obsessed by
the figure of Charles de Saint-
Évremond, a 17th-century
writer who introduced
champagne to the court of
Charles II in England and is
the only Frenchman —
indeed, the only foreigner —
to be buried in Poets’ Corner
at Westminster Abbey.
“It is a marvellous story.
Evremond is a way to say that
we are very proud of this shared
heritage between France and
England. We love England,” Le Sueur
says with a twinkle. He hopes that
Domaine Evremond will be at the
premium end of English sparkling
wine — or “the bubbles”, as he calls it.
It is becoming an increasingly
crowded market as many of thein the French company’s decision to
come across the Channel was global
warming, according to McGrath. “I
think a big change was in 2003. That
was that really hot summer, when
thousands of people died in France.
That was a sea change,” he says.
In the Champagne region the
average temperature has increased by
1C in the past half-century, according
to Valéry Laramée de Tannenberg, a
co-author of Threats to Wine: The
Challenges of Climate Change. This
represents a serious threat to the
future of a fruit that requires relatively
cool temperatures to flourish, but it’s
an opportunity for farmers in Britain,
where a similar increase has
transformed land that was previously
too cold for good wine into almost
the ideal temperature.
On top of that, the Champagne
region — the only 130 square
miles where you can make
champagne — is limited. If
you want to expand you have
to look elsewhere.
Hence Taittinger’s presence
in Kent, which sits on the
same seam of chalk that runs
underneath the Channel and
also comes up in the
Champagne region. “We know
the soil, we like the soil, we can put
the roots deeply in the soil. It’s
marvellous,” says Damien Le Sueur,
the urbane managing director of
Taittinger, who has come over for the
day to inspect his latest project. “But
it’s not the same. Even with global
warming, it won’t be,” he insists,Patrick McGrath at the
Domaine Evremond
Vineyard in Kenty
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English wine is now regarded as among
the best in the world. If you’re sceptical,
then ask yourself why Taittinger now
has a vineyard here, says Harry Wallop
T
he scene could not be
more English. A
woman wearing a
Barbour jacket and
walking her Yorkshire
terrier, stops to talk to
the local farmer.
Behind him is an oast
house and trees laden with Kentish
apples. In the farmyard, a tractor
arrives with that morning’s harvest
ready to unload its crop. But they are
not apples, they are pinot noir grapes,
and the containers bear a distinctly
French name: Domaine Evremond.
This farm, just outside Canterbury, is
mostly owned by Taittinger, one of the
world’s most famous champagne
houses, and Domaine Evremond is its
latest venture: sparkling wine grown in
Kent, but made, blended and bottled
by a team of French experts.
The dog walker tells the farmer that
she often goes on holiday to France.
“I’ve been into a bar in Saint Tropez
where they serve Taittinger, and I tell
them they’ve planted vineyards where
I live in Kent, and all the French
people think I’m making it up. I think
it’s wonderful,” she says with a chuckle
before heading off down the lane.
That Taittinger and its English
partners are sinking £12 million into
this project, ripping up apple trees and
replacing them with grapes, is proof
that our sparkling wine is not just a
little success story of recent years, but
possibly also very big money.
“Go back 30 years and English wine
was considered a bit of a joke,” Patrick
McGrath says, “but the quality is now
really fantastic.” He would say that —
he is not just the farmer in charge of
these grapes in the bucolic scene I’ve
just witnessed, but also a large investor
in Taittinger’s UK project. However,
plenty of experts agree with him.
“We’ve got past the stage of anyone
being apologetic about people serving
English sparkling wine,” says Sarah
Jane Evans, a leading wine expert and
author. “And there’s no question
among the international wine trade
that it is a serious category.”
The number of vineyards in England
has quadrupled in the past 20 years,
from 857 hectares (2,117 acres) in
2000 to 3,500 now. More land in
Britain is given over to the growing of
commercial grapes than pears, and
well over ten million bottles of English
fizz were produced last year, according
to Wine GB, the trade body.
Does the increasing quantity —
even Aldi stocks an English sparkling
wine — equate to quality, though?
The wine world is awash with
awards, but Decanter’s is one of the
most reputable. Each year, in blind
tastings, it whittles down all its award
winners to just 50 wines: the 50 best in
the world. In 2020 two English ones
made the top 50. By comparison,
South Africa, New Zealand and
Argentina — countries with vast wine
industries — managed only one each.Evans is co-chairwoman of these
awards. “I think it’s terrific,” she says
of England’s success. “I am not that
surprised because I have watched the
growth in quality over time, but
nonetheless everyone’s quality around
the world is improving and 17,
different wines were competing. It’s a
wonderful achievement. And I don’t
think it’s a flash in the pan.”
McGrath and his French backers
certainly hope she is correct. Because
the grapes that were being harvested
the day I visited two weeks ago will
not end up on the shelves — as fizz —
until 2024. True, the harvest is a quick
process. A team of 36 Romanian and
Bulgarian pickers use secateurs to cut
each bunch individually into a bucket,
moving along the trellised vines at
speed. The team pick 25 tonnes a day.
The grapes are crushed within an hour
of picking and once pumped into vast
steel vats, the juice is left to ferment
for six months. Only next year will it
be blended, bottled and left to ferment
again for a further three years.
“It’s a long and very capital-
intensive process,” McGrath says. “We
bought this land in 2015 and we’ll be
selling the first bottle nine years later.”
Taittinger isn’t the only champagne
house investing in the UK. Pommery
has a vineyard too and this summerLVMH, the luxury goods giant that
owns Krug and Moët et Chandon, was
reported to be looking at coming here.
McGrath is only a part-time farmer.
He ended up in the wine trade after
reading geography at Oxford
University and becoming the
marketing manager of Bollinger. He
was responsible for ensuring that it
was Bolly (rather than Veuve or Moët)
that got used in the sitcom Absolutely
Fabulous in the 1990s (“sheer luck”, he
insists) and went on to run Hatch
Mansfield, a very successful wine and
champagne importer and wholesaler.
The main brands he imports are Villa
Maria, a New Zealand wine; Louis
Jadot, the upmarket Burgundy; and
Taittinger, the champagne brand. This
remains his day job.
“About six or seven years ago I
started to look at English sparkling
wine and was thinking maybe it’s
about time I represented an English
sparkling wine because I was aware it
was doing really well,” he says.
He discussed this with the chairman
of Taittinger, Pierre-Emmanuel
Taittinger, who was, McGrath says,
“very impressed by the quality of
English sparkling”. The deciding factorGo back 30 years
and English wine
was considered
a bit of a joke