Drink out to help out
AS THIS SEASON’S UK GRAPE HARVEST GETS UNDER WAY, LAURA MARTIN LOOKS AT HOW BRITISH WINE IS BECOMING AS SUCCESSFUL AS THAT OF OUR EUROPEAN NEIGHBOURS
SITTING on a terrace in the mid-September sun, under blue skies and overlooking rows of vineyards, a glass of sharp, crisp bubbles is poured. Butterflies dance among the wildflowers at my feet and I can make out the sea in the distance. I could be in the south of France or the rolling hills of Emilia-Romagna, but instead I’m just over an hour’s high-speed train ride away from London at Tillingham vineyard (tillingham.com), near Rye, East Sussex. And at the rate I’m draining its delicious wines, it’s looking increasingly likely I’ll need to roll into one of its 11 on-site boutique bedrooms later. While
some of us have spent this cursed year grappling with sourdough (guilty) or tending windowsill tomato plants, the main pursuit most of us were dabbling in was alcohol. Over half of Britons have admitted to drinking more during lockdown, whether it was happy-hour Zoom calls or swig-along online wine tastings, and the enforced downtime has meant a lot of us are experimenting with more than the two-for-a-tenner bottles from the offie. Like our other new shopping habits, we’re going fully local, from the grape to the glass.
Tillingham saw ‘a hundredfold increase’ in wine sales during quarantine (‘We had to limit bottles to one per person,’ co-founder Ben Walgate tells me), while over at Albury Organic Vineyard in the Surrey Hills (alburyvineyard.com) there’s been a rush on the Silent Pool Rosé. Once you’ve popped the cork, it’s easy to see why.
Recently, I’ve loved checking out British natural wine – lively, tangy young drinks from grapes grown without chemicals or pesticides. Drinks like Tillingham’s sparky, earthy Qvevri or Ancre Hill’s Orange Wine (ancrehillestates.co.uk) have turned me into a natural wine fan, as my Instagram now reveals. Yes, that is a bottle turned into a candle holder you see in the background.
Over the past few years, British wine has taken big strides and finally managed to shake off the unfair reputation of being the lesser cousin of Europe’s big wine producers.
Increasing temperatures and hot, dry summers have meant areas like Hampshire, Kent, East Sussex and Wales have become hotbeds for the vines and a shift to more conscientious or organic farming methods means the fermented fruit shines through. Around 5.5million bottles of UK wine were sold last year, and judging by the binmen’s looks when emptying my street’s recycling, it’s likely to spike even more this year.
Today, the UK’s 700 vineyards and 175 wineries make for a perfect staycation, especially now, with harvest season about to get into full, grape-crushing swing.
Despite the country’s wineries doing stellar sales of their wine online, their hotels, guestrooms, cafés and restaurants have obviously lost a lot of revenue this year. Now I know there are so many on our doorstep, I’m willing to Drink Out To Help Out. It’s the least I can do, I think selflessly, as I eye up other nearby vineyards on my map, and order another glass of East Sussex’s finest.