There is every sign that the nation will go Jubilee mad this weekend — the bunting, the street parties, the Thames pageant. It’s surely the time to open the bubbly — but whose?
For this patriotic celebration coincides with a marked rise in the fortunes of English sparkling wine producers. They’ve enjoyed glowing reviews in blind tastings against champagnes. Demand from drinkers is surging. It’s the perfect tipple for a patriotic weekend. The problem is that several champagne producers have decided they want a slice of the action too.
I doubt many English wine growers will seriously begrudge Moët & Chandon for bringing out a special Jubilee cuvée of its Impérial Brut NV (same Moët, different packaging). But Pommery is surely being a little disingenuous in marketing its “Pop” NV in a bottle painted with a Union Jack. Worse, Champagne Lanson’s Black Label Brut NV was last week being marketed at Gatwick in Union Jack jackets under large signs proclaiming “Best of British”.
So enraged was Cornish winemaker Bob Lindo of award-winning Camel Valley when he saw the display that he staged a sit-in at the World Duty Free store until staff agreed to take down the “Best of British” sign.
As Lindo wrote to Home Secretary Theresa May: “I don’t believe that wrapping a French wine in the Union Jack is remotely acceptable.” Quite so. Personally I’d also agree with Lindo’s acid observation that this was an “outrageous attempt to pass off an inferior champagne” — he told Mrs May that Lanson Black Label came “89th in a recent blind tasting, behind 85 English sparkling wines”. Even as a Devonian, I’d take a bottle of Lindo’s Camel Valley “Cornwall” Brut 2010 over the Lanson any day. And let’s not even talk about the Pommery Pop.
But then the British have long had an oddly close relationship with champagne. We are easily the world’s biggest importer of the stuff, guzzling more than the next two biggest champagne importing countries, the US and Germany, combined.
The past decade has seen a real boom in English wine: the number of vineyards has almost doubled in that time, to almost 400. Half of all our plantings are now destined for sparkling wine. Quality is steadily improving. Charlie Holland, winemaker at leading Sussex producer Ridgeview, thinks English sparkling production will hit five million bottles a year by 2015.
To put that in perspective, though, Champagne churned out nearly 323 million bottles last year — 34.5 million of which arrived on these shores, even in tough economic times. So you can forgive a small English producer like Lindo for feeling the pressure from the champagne giants. Even with climate change warming our harvests and a thirsty domestic market, England is never going to compete on volume — or on price.
And in this respect, it’s really quite all right to enjoy either English sparkling wine or champagne this weekend. By all means seek out Bob Lindo’s Camel Valley wines, or those from top producers such as Ridgeview, Nyetimber and Coates & Seely. And if there isn’t enough of those to go around, then you can still feel patriotic — if you so choose — raising a glass of the, er, French equivalent to Her Maj. But please let’s not pretend it’s British.
