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[Raymond Blanc’s double Michelin-starred
restaurant] Le Manoir and Nathan Outlaw
and be in Asda – no disrespect to Asda.”
Adopting less premium price points will be
inevitable with further growth, though, says
Chapel Down CEO Frazer Thompson. “The
wine industry is screaming into its own echo
chamber all the time, and has this incredible
belief that the consumer ‘gets [the pricing]’ –
but the consumer is a much more phlegmatic
animal and is yet to be convinced.”
There is also danger, he stresses, that
actual consumer interest has been over-
stated. “There may be 10 million bottles com-
ing on to the market in three to four years’
time and we haven’t actually gured out what
the peak demand for English sparkling is.
Working out how to grow sales from 1.5 mil-
lion to 15 million bottles – that’s a big jump.”
He argues suppliers as a collective run the
risk of “subjugating English sparkling wine to
a category – in that lies death”. “Most people
can’t name a single brand, which is what hap-
pened with prosecco. We’ve got to get people
investing in brands and not relying on the
industry to promote itself as one.”
Meanwhile the quality of English still
wines, compared with our revered sparkling
wines, is less consistent. “The stills are get-
ting better, but they are much more di cult
to make in the cool climate compared to spar-
kling,” says Ridgeview’s Roberts. “For stills
you almost want the opposite of England –
lower acidity, higher sugar, and more volup-
t uous f r u it.”a much easier gateway into the category for
shoppers who aren’t convinced to splash out.
“I realised early on I wouldn’t be able to
a ord to buy land and plant,” he says. “I have
rst refusal on grapes from certain producers,
then we have an existing winemaker whose
winery we use. We own all parts of the pro-
cess without owning any land or equipment.”
They’re not the only ones sidestepping
the traditional approach. “There are lots of
brands, like Renegade and Blackbook, urban
wineries that buy grapes on the open mar-
ket and process it themselves,” says Connell.
“You’re going to see a lot more of this,
because it’s more fun, creative, and you’re
not restricted by certain winemaking tech-
niques – you can do things that are small
batch and very interesting.”
Lastly there’s climate change. Which innu-
merable headlines have credited with trans-
forming the south of England into the zz
maker’s paradise it is today. “Overall it is
probably positive for us, and I am told that
people in Champagne are worried that the
change in the climate means their acidity is
falling,” says WineGB’s Robinson. “If that did
happen it would mean the southern half of
the UK would become the new area for spar-
kling wine of that sort of quality.”
But Roberts stresses caution. "When it
comes to climate change you can go o on
all sorts of tangents.” For now, she says, the
focus should be on “getting consistent supply
into the market”. And warmer or not, English
weather is still likely to remain variable.“We need to be
on shelves innumbers, and
we need to be
in Tesco, notjust Waitrose”
And seriously high input costs mean get-
ting into the industry can be di cult for wan-
nabe suppliers. “You’ve got to remember that
wine is incredibly cash degenerative,” says
Thompson. “Once you’ve picked [the fruit]
and put it into a winery, it’s at the very least
three years before you can release any money
f rom it.”
Once on shelves, the challenge is getting
shoppers used to traditional wine regions to
take a punt on something new and expensive.
“A lot of people haven’t heard of English wine,
so why are they going to spend that much on
it?” says Henry Connell, founder of canned
wine brand The Uncommon, which is one
of numerous ‘cra ’-style producers sidestep-
ping the category’s massive input costs.
Admittedly, a 250ml can of The Uncommon’s
wine costs £5, but Connell believes it is still