My first job in the wine industry was at a tiny shop and bar that sold exclusively English (and one Welsh) wine. It was 2012, and the concept was, to put it politely, pioneering. But it takes a hint of madness to build something new—as, I imagine, most British wine producers would agree.
In the past 15 years, English wine has gone from a novelty to an established category, from a rich person’s folly to a serious industry. The quality of Britain’s sparkling wines is undisputed, but now England is establishing its still-wine credentials, too, with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay that have caught the eye even of Burgundian vignerons. Today, the maturing industry is being shaped by this newer pursuit of quality still wine, premiumization, the rise of Essex, emerging Protected Designations of Origin (PDOs), and growing international interest.
The latest report from Wines of Great Britain (WineGB), the national wine association for England and Wales, was published in June 2025 and documents 4,840 hectares (11,960 acres) under vine in the UK (with 980 hectares, or 2,420 acres, of those not yet in production), an increase of 510% since 2005. Over 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) have been planted since 2020. The average size of a vineyard is small, with the total area divided between 1,158 vineyards and 280 wineries.
Technically, the name British wine can extend to wine made with imported must, so it was historically avoided by the industry. English wine became the go-to terminology, but this is unfair to the admittedly small (but growing) number of Welsh vineyards. More recently, there has been a campaign to reclaim British for the industry, so it is used here, referring to wine made in Britain, from British-grown fruit.
Most British vineyards are in England, but Wales now has over 90 hectares (220 acres) of vines to its name. In England, the heartland of production is the south. Kent and Sussex lead the way, and Essex is now the third most planted county in England. There are 99 different varieties planted across the UK, but Chardonnay (1,500 hectares, or 3,700 acres), Pinot Noir (1,370 hectares, or 3,390 acres), and Meunier (410 hectares, or 1,010 acres), which are largely used for sparkling wine, lead plantings. Together these three grapes represent over two-thirds of the total vineyard area.
England’s early vineyards were planted primarily to hybrids and German crossings. Bacchus, Seyval Blanc, and Reichensteiner were favorites. These disease-resistant grapes were thought to be perfect for the country’s cooler climate. Many considered Bacchus a potential trademark variety, with its notes of gooseberry, boxwood, and elderflower reminiscent of the English countryside, and there are still 335 hectares (825 acres) planted today, including Camel Valley’s Darnibole vineyard, a single-vineyard and single-producer PDO.
For the most part, producers have moved away from these varieties in favor of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, accepting a loss of quantity to produce higher-quality wines. There is, however, a small movement prioritizing hardier varieties, including hybrids and PIWI grapes, which allow for less intervention in the vineyard. These are often championed by natural-wine producers, such as Hebron Vineyard and Winery, in Wales, and Lost in a Field, in England. MW Tim Wildman, the Australian winemaker and founder of Lost in a Field, says that his pét-nat celebrates “the UK’s forgotten heritage grape varieties,” a key part of England’s viticultural history.
Traditional method sparkling wine built Britain’s vinous name, but still wine is becoming a serious part of its offering. The split between still- and sparkling-wine production has remained fairly stable in the UK for the past decade, at around 30% still to 70% sparkling. But, Wildman notes, “Ten years ago, all that still [wine] would have been Bacchus.” An increasing number of producers are making still Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, while Pinot Blanc and Gris are increasingly being planted for still-wine production.
The cost of producing wine in the UK, with low yields, high labor costs, and high taxes, is significant. Wildman says, “The floor for English still-wine profitability is probably £15 or more,” continuing, “and you’re never going to square that circle of quality, value, and price with Bacchus or Pinot Rosé.” A shift to premium Pinot Noir and Chardonnay is, in his mind, essential to the sustainability of the industry, and it follows the template laid out in other cool-climate regions. He points to Tasmania, planted originally for sparkling wine but now a heartland of premium Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and a similar trajectory has been followed in the Adelaide Hills and the Yarra Valley.
In recent years, Essex has become renowned for its still Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The region, located northeast of London, was the focus of the reality TV show The Only Way Is Essex (often abbreviated to TOWIE), an English equivalent to Jersey Shore. The butt of endless jokes, Essex is an unlikely hub for England’s fine-wine industry, yet that is what it is fast becoming.
Between 2020 and 2025, the vineyard area in Essex doubled to 470 hectares (1,160 acres), an explosion in planting after the 2020 vintage showed the region’s quality potential. While this is still significantly less than the 1,240 hectares (3,060 acres) of Kent—or the 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) of Burgundy—it makes Essex the third most planted county in England today.
Vineyards were first planted in the county in the 1960s, and, for years, English producers have been quietly sourcing Essex fruit and blending it into their wines. But finally, Essex’s name—and that of the Crouch Valley—is appearing on labels. The Dengie Peninsula, the area between the Crouch and Blackwater Rivers, is notably dry and warm. The average annual rainfall is among the lowest amounts in England, at 400 to 535 millimeters (15.7 to 21 inches)—less than that of Burgundy or Champagne. These dry conditions allow producers to leave the fruit on the vine much longer than is possible elsewhere in England, waiting for full physiological and phenological ripeness, without the disease pressure that so often forces growers’ hands in the UK. In four of the past five vintages, harvest has stretched into early November. Chaptalization is the norm across much of the UK, but here Chardonnay and Pinot Noir can reach 13% ABV consistently.
The viticulturist Duncan McNeill, the founder of McNeill Vineyard Management, moved back to Essex in 2006 after time spent working in New Zealand and Germany. In the past two decades, he has been involved in planting most of Essex’s vineyards, championing thicker-skinned German clones of Pinot Noir, as well as aggressive and early leaf stripping (a practice feasible only with England’s low light levels) to aid ripening and reduce disease pressure. McNeill explains, “The people that have been investing in planting vineyards have been successful people that had no prior knowledge about grapegrowing or wine production. So I was almost given carte blanche, really, to push the boundaries of what you can do in terms of ripening grapes.”
It’s not just the climate that sets the Crouch Valley and the Dengie Peninsula apart, however, but also their soils, with smectite-rich London clay common. This clay is negatively charged, meaning that it binds water. As a result, it both is well-drained and can supply the vine with water in dry conditions. MW John Atkinson, who has consulted for Danbury Ridge Wine Estate, in Essex, since its first vintage in 2018, explains, “There’s this remarkable buffering capacity. If it’s dry, if it’s wet—you look at the vine from one year to the next, [and] you can’t tell the difference.”
Danbury Ridge, whose vines were planted by McNeill, has been at the forefront of Essex’s growth, producing examples of still Chardonnay and Pinot Noir that compete internationally and have been reviewed by publications such as Vinous and The Wine Advocate. Now, Jackson Family Wines has invested in the county, establishing Marbury Wines, with Charlie Holland (previously the CEO of Gusbourne, in Kent) as the winemaker. Alex Moreau, a Chassagne-Montrachet winemaker, is making wine in partnership with Missing Gate Vineyard, while a one-off collaboration with Danbury Ridge in 2025 prompted Pierre and Marianne Duroché, whose Domaine Duroché is one of the most respected names in Gevrey-Chambertin, to buy land for themselves in Essex. Given the price of vineyards in Burgundy, it’s not a surprising choice: premier cru Pinot Noir vineyards sell for roughly $1.3 million per hectare, while Essex land is about $120,000 per hectare.
Although Essex’s quality potential has been proven, yields remain small. Some growers produce only a ton per acre in the Crouch Valley, and Holland anticipates the ceiling for quality fruit from a mature vineyard, such as those he has planted for Marbury, is 2.5 tons per acre—low by international standards. The dry conditions that set the area apart are also a potential challenge. London clay is not universal, and, without its buffering capacity, vineyards can require irrigation. Both Marbury and Danbury Ridge have irrigation systems in place, aware that they are necessary for establishing vines and in areas with more sand or gravel.
The investment of Jackson Family Wines makes a statement about the British wine industry, and other outsiders are also moving into the UK. Two of Champagne’s grandes marques have established bases in the south of England. Pommery used fruit from existing vineyards to produce the early vintages of Louis Pommery England (first released in 2018), planting 30 hectares (74 acres) of its own in Hampshire in 2017.
The first wine from Champagne Taittinger’s long-awaited English project, in collaboration with its UK importer Hatch Mansfield, was finally released in 2025. Domaine Evremond, conceived in Kent in 2014, now comprises 62 hectares (153 acres) of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Meunier.
It’s not just a financial commitment from abroad that is shifting Britain’s wine scene. Early British producers were self-taught or studied at Plumpton College, in East Sussex, and they rarely had international experience—or context—for winemaking. But that has changed.
Dermot Sugrue, the winemaker and co-owner of Sugrue South Downs and one of Britain’s leading vignerons, says, “Today, we’ve got lots and lots of foreign winemakers and, importantly, young winemakers in the UK who’ve cut their teeth abroad . . . bringing their experience and their talent back to the UK.”
English sparkling wine sits firmly alongside Champagne in price, with flagship bottlings from Nyetimber, based in West Sussex, and Gusbourne generally retailing for up to £45 in the UK and $70 in the US. In the past decade, prices have reached new heights with the birth of prestige English sparkling cuvées, ultrapremium bottlings that retail in the UK for around £150 and in the US for over $200. Nyetimber was the first to hit the market with its 1086 Blanc de Blancs and 1086 Rosé in 2018. As the estate’s senior winemaker, Brad Greatrix, told me, Nyetimber’s owner, the Dutch businessman Eric Heerema, argued that, if England was to be taken seriously as a world-class producer of sparkling wine, it needed to have a prestige cuvée.
Andrew Weeber, who founded Gusbourne, felt the same. With Holland, he started trials for a prestige wine during Gusbourne’s very first vintage, in 2006. The 2014 vintage was the first to be released, offered to consumers in 2022. Most recently, Squerryes, in Kent, released the first vintage (2014) of its Patience, the most expensive prestige cuvée to date, with a retail price of roughly £225 in the UK and $285 in the US, breaking new boundaries for English wine’s place on the shelf.
Wine producers in Britain continue to seek a brand—a snappy name that can be seized by consumers—that might rival Champagne. Various wineries have tried to introduce their own names, including Britagne (used by Coates & Seely) and Merret (trademarked and previously used by Ridgeview Wine Estate). Currently, PDO and PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) English and Welsh sparkling wines can be tank or bottle fermented, so WineGB introduced a voluntary hallmark to differentiate traditional method sparkling wines: Great British Classic Method. Part of efforts to take back the term British, it’s a quality signal for consumers, if unlikely to be what wine lovers are asking for at the bar.
There are also early efforts underway to formulate an appellation system. The broad-stroke PGIs and PDOs for English and Welsh wine were launched with the 2010 vintage. Camel Valley applied successfully for a PDO for its Darnibole vineyard, which was awarded in 2017. Progress stalled, but, in 2022, the regionally focused Sussex PDO was approved. Rathfinny Wine Estate, Ridgeview, and Bolney Wine Estate began campaigning for its establishment back in 2015. The PDO applies to both still and sparkling wines grown within the counties of East Sussex and West Sussex, with various conditions on production. Its establishment was controversial from start to finish, and, similar to many AVAs, its borders are drawn on political, rather than geological, lines.
Greatrix explains, “From our experience, chalk-grown Chardonnay from Sussex has more in common with chalk-grown Chardonnay from Hampshire, for example, than Chardonnay grown on other soil types in Sussex.” Given the varied soils across Sussex, many argued that a PDO based on administrative districts was of little value. Three years on, only a handful of producers are using it on their labels.
Official applications have been submitted for several other PDOs, including Crouch Valley (submitted three years ago) and, intriguingly, Natural Wine of Wales, while Kent plans to apply for three distinct areas (Kent Downs, Kent Weald, and Greensand Ridge), according to Holland. Jonathan White, the CEO of Gusbourne, says that he is open to anything that is “based on actual soil and climate and regionality, as opposed to just drawn on political boundaries.”
The largest UK producers source fruit from across several counties. Nyetimber, for example, works with vineyards in West Sussex, Kent, and Hampshire. Both Greatrix and Sugrue suggest it’s too early for Britain to be defining subregions. Says Sugrue, “I think the longer this open phase of allowing people to experiment happens, the better.”
The sudden growth of the British wine industry is exciting, but that growth brings its own challenges. The 2024 vintage was poor—as it was across much of northern Europe and confirming that Britain remains a marginal climate—yielding only 10.7 million bottles. The 2025 vintage, however, produced 16.5 million bottles. Prior to that, 2023 was the UK’s largest vintage to date, with a record 21.6 million bottles made. In 2024, however, only 9.1 million bottles of British wine were sold. This is a small increase on 2023 (3%) but shows a marked gap between production and sales, with only modest sales growth and more vineyards not yet at maturity. Estimates suggest that production could reach 30 million bottles a year by 2032, and it’s impossible not to wonder where all that wine will go. And, as Wildman notes, that doesn’t consider an unknown inventory surplus on producers’ books.
Sugrue says, “I think too many vineyards have been planted too quickly in the last decade. Suddenly, you get big vintages like 2018 and then 2023 and again like last year, 2025.” He continues, “Lots of these new vineyards are coming online at the same time as vineyards planted a little bit earlier hitting full production, and suddenly you’ve got this deluge of grapes. It is a real wake-up call for the industry.”
McNeill has seen it firsthand, noting how inflated grape prices made for unrealistic business plans, and producers are now facing tricky decisions. Despite his business model, he is advising landowners not to plant.
Gusbourne has pulled back on production, focusing only on its Kent vineyards. White explains, “We were making more wine than we required at this time in our evolution, and the sensible decision for the financial sustainability of the business was to reduce production.”
Greatrix is more relaxed about the issue, arguing that a buildup of stock is natural for sparkling-wine producers, given the long lead time between harvest and release. But not everyone has the backing of someone like Heerema, who has not seen a profit in the two decades since he acquired Nyetimber.
Late last year, Ridgeview entered administration, the British equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US, an alarm that rang loud and clear throughout the industry. In February 2026, Ridgeview was bought out by Quantum Beverage Company. Consolidation seems inevitable, but, according to Holland, who has been making wine in England since 2009, the challenge is for producers to diversify, both in terms of sales and styles produced. There is a limit, he argues, to how much traditional method English sparkling wine can be sold at fine-dining establishments in the UK.
Most producers agree that there is opportunity for exports to grow. Today, exports represent just 9% of sales, though with an increase of 35% from 2023. Exports are dominated by the largest producers, for whom exports can represent up to 25% of sales, with Japan, Norway, and the US as key markets. It’s not an easy—or cheap—opportunity for expansion but will be essential for British wine’s long-term viability.
The transformation of the British wine industry in the past two decades has been extraordinary. As Greatrix explains, “We’ve reached an interesting stage where you can do blind tastings and sometimes England wins, sometimes not—but the interesting point is that they belong on the same table.”
With the sparkling wines established, the UK’s still wines are finding their footing. Atkinson argues, “The international game of great production—the World Cup—is still wine.” Producers such as Danbury Ridge and Marbury are already showing what is possible for still wine in the UK, but the category is new. Wildman says, “We’re not even in the foothills yet; we’re just setting out to climb the mountain. But I think the mountain’s there to be climbed.”
In time, if still wines can seal Britain’s vinous credentials, it is likely that individual sites will emerge as grands crus and a real sense of regionality will be established. First, however, the industry must find its way through a period of overproduction, stumbling through its teenage years to keep progressing. If it does, however, consumers worldwide should expect a lot more from this small island.