As a fully signed-up member of the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati, I’m not especially nationalistic, but I’m more than ready to champion our best food and drink traditions. We can bask in a long history of winemaking – it dates back certainly to the middle ages and probably even to the Romans – which is now being seriously scaled up: in March, the Food Standards Agency reported that 2025’s English wine production was up 55% on the previous year. That, and the exceptional quality of those examples I’ve tasted in the past 12 months, seems reason alone to celebrate this year’s English wine week.
For decades, English wine has been dogged by a reputation for being all mouth and no trousers: bougie pricing, underwhelming drinking. While there’s been well-deserved noise about our sparkling wine, some curmudgeons question whether it’s really worth champagne prices. Meanwhile, our still wines can be considered a squinty novelty: bracingly acidic, incongruously expensive, something to say you’ve tried before you head back to the continental Europe aisle. But I’m here to tell you that English wine is finally finding its trousers.
