Britain has ingredients to be the world’s tastiest nation

From superb cheeses to terrific wines, the UK has all the ingredients to be a serious gastronomic player

Asummer’s evening recently and I was sipping a glass of Sussex. Ahead of me were hundreds of precise lines of vines stretching out into the distance. I was standing on the terrace of the Rathfinny Wine Estate and would soon repair inside, to sit behind vast windows that framed the wonderful views of vineyard, hills of the South Downs beyond and a glimpse of the sea. Beneath the restaurant was the winery, a vast warehouse filled with enormous steel tanks which soon, once the harvest was underway, would be filled with the juice of chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier grapes for a variety of sparkling wines.

Dinner would be a six-course menu

of local delicacies: a tart of freshly picked peas, roasted tomato consommé with wild garlic, pork belly and a panna cotta of strawberries and cherry blossom. Each course would be matched with a blancs de blancs, a sparkling rosé and one of the estate’s still wines: their Cradle Valley white, a mix of pinot blanc and pinot gris.

Outside the vines work their way down through the chalky soils to find moisture. The striking buildings of Rathfinny – vast warehouses nestling on an edge of the valley and in the 600-acre estate – have the capacity to produce a million bottles of sparkling wine, which is now officially called Sussex, each year. The owners are looking out to Europe and beyond to Asia and North America for customers.

I had to pinch myself both at the extraordinary achievement thus far and at the mesmerising ambition. But this is no mere punt that Britain might have a golden future in the food and wine business. Rathfinny is just one example of the belief now emerging across Britain that this country is a serious player in the world of gastronomy.

How many would have scoffed a few decades ago at the idea of English vineyards with smart restaurants. Yet across the south of England – and an odd smattering further north – each year another opens. Within a decade you will be able to do what many thought only possible overseas; through Burgundy in France, for example or across the state of Victoria in Australia.

Visitors will come to Britain for culinary journeys. And to a nation that was, in the many years that followed the Second World War, not just a bleak desert when it came to food, but one that no one would have believed ever had the urge to improve.

Today, you can’t find a space in the car park of a provincial town for want of farmers’ markets. Our cheeses beat those of France – softer, stinkier, harder, you name it. Our cider is certainly fruitier and drier than anything coming out of Normandy, we have the finest beef cattle in the world, the most succulent lamb – fed on the lushest grass and the best insects – and I don’t know about you, but have you ever tried a glass of milk anywhere else?

In 1962 the then young writer Bernard Levin wrote a diatribe against the state of this nation’s food and drink sector. There was one word, he said, that summed up the British hotel and restaurant industry and that was “disgusting”. In an episode of That Was the Week That Was, he continued: “There are other words that might be pressed into service in an emergency: lazy, inefficient, dishonest, dirty, complacent, exorbitant, but disgusting just about sums it up.”

In the Sixties the idea of restaurant service as a respectable profession was a joke and most people looking for employment as chefs were probably too stupid to be hod carriers. Today, service is seen as an art and our restaurants are sought after by young chefs seeking apprenticeships from across the world.

My pleasure as a restaurant critic for this paper is that most of my reviews are positive. Much as the critic relishes the prospect of a turkey on the horizon they are a rarer beast these days.

Of course, the food and drink industry faces huge challenges. But we can, for once, look within our shores for talent – we have the farmers, the land, the retail outlets and a growing number of spirited independents. And a large bunch of hungry, sophisticated consumers.

Our Prime Minister likes to eat out, so let’s hope he can help to nurture the talent and circumstances to make Britain the tastiest nation on the planet. Let’s raise a glass of Sussex to that.