English Sparkling Wine: Effervescence and Reserve

BY ANNE KREBIEHL MW | FEBRUARY 10, 2025

Green and Pleasant Albion

“O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green…”

John Keats’ words are an apt opening to this report on English Sparkling Wine. What debuted in 1997 as a curiosity, with Nyetimber’s first release of their 1992 Blanc de Blancs, took just three decades to grow into a proper category. What is even more extraordinary than the rapid expansion of vineyards—an almost five-fold increase since the late 1980s—is the professionalism of this young but growing industry. Established players jostle with newcomers, presenting an exciting and delicious spectrum of traditional method sparkling wines that have come a long way, especially in the past decade. So let the corks pop and dive in.

Across the Gardens of England

While England’s sparkling pioneers all centered on the southeastern counties of Kent, Sussex and Surrey,  with a far western outpost in Cornwall,  the wines I tasted for this report hail from the west in Devon, Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire, stretch north of London to Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire along the Thames Valley, and reach as far east as Essex and the Suffolk Coast. There are currently 4,209 hectares of vines in the UK, most of them in England, with Kent, Sussex and Hampshire the leading counties. In 2023, sparkling wine made up 76% of the UK’s total wine production, 91% of which were traditional method wines. Thus, it does not come as a surprise that the most planted grape variety in the UK is Chardonnay (32%), followed by Pinot Noir (27%). Both varieties shine, especially Chardonnay. Many of the top-scoring wines in this report are Blanc de Blancs. In fact, the vast majority of sparkling wines in the UK are made from the three principal sparkling varieties, namely Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, with Pinot Gris, Seyval Blanc and even Pinotage only making tiny contributions to the usual triumvirate.