Champagne houses are toasting hotter British summers as they cross the Channel to make sparkling wine.
French companies including Taittinger and Pommery, as well as German giant Henkell-Freixenet, are hoping to bottle the recent successes of British vineyards by buying up estates in southern England as the region is warmed by climate change.
Taittinger will launch its first English-made sparkling wine in 2024 under the Domaine Evremond brand, after buying 250 acres near Faversham, Kent, and beginning planting in 2017.
Pommery grows vines in 89 acres in Hampshire, and will sell its yield next year – as Henkell-Freixenet, the world’s biggest sparkling wine firm, now has 36 acres after buying the Bolney Wine Estate in West Sussex.
‘I know a number of established vineyards in England that have been approached by French producers to see if they will sell,’ Nick Watson, of estate agent Strutt and Parker, told The Daily Mail.
‘Champagne houses are also looking to buy land to plant vineyards. It is a trend that will continue. The south of England now has a similar climate to that of the Champagne region in the early ’80s and ’90s.
‘Since then, France has become warmer and that means they have to pick grapes earlier. If you are taking the grapes off the vine earlier then you don’t give the opportunity to develop that complexity of flavour. In England, they take longer to ripen so you get all that extra flavour.’
Britain’s chalky soils are seen as similar to those in Champagne.
And the moves come as more drinkers raise a glass to UK firms – with Nyetimber and Rathfinny growing grapes in Sussex, Chapel Down and Simpsons in Kent and Furleigh in Dorset.
By 2040, 40million bottles will have been sold, predicted Wine GB. Brad Greatrix, of Nyetimber, told The Daily Mail: ‘It is a compliment to have Champagne houses coming to England.’
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