Wine from the United Kingdom

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The United Kingdom is a major consumer of wine, but only a very minor producer of wine. Wine from the United Kingdom is produced in small quantities in the south of England, usually under the title of English wine. There are also a handful of small vineyards in South Wales that produce Welsh Wine. The English and Welsh wine industry has been helped by the warmer British summers over recent years and it is speculated that global warming may encourage major growth in the future. As of 2006 there are around 400 vineyards in total, but most of them are very small, with a combined area of around 2,000 acres according to english-wine.com. English wine supplies about 1% of domestic demand in the United Kingdom.^[1]

English wine should not be confused with a product that is officially called British wine. This is made in Britain by fermenting imported grape juice or concentrate that can originate from anywhere in the world.

1 History
2 In the 20th century
3 Effect on the British economy
4 Rules of wine labelling
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

[edit] History

The Romans introduced wine making to the United Kingdom, by trying to grow grapes as far north as Lincolnshire, however the British climate was simply too cold and too wet to grow grapes for making wine. Wine making continued as far as the Normans with over 40 vineyards in England as mentioned in the Domesday Book.

From the Middle Ages, the English market was the main customer of clarets from Bordeaux, France, helped by the Plantagenet kingdom, which included England and large provinces in France. However in the 18th century, the Methuen Treaty of 1703 gave high duties for French wine, lead to the English being a main consumer of sweet fortified wines like sherry, port wine, and Madeira wine from Spain and Portugal. Fortified wines became popular because unlike regular wine, it does not spoil after the long journey from Portugal to England.

Later in the 19th century, many upper and upper-middle class people started to drink wines from many parts of Europe like France, Spain, Italy and Germany.

[edit] In the 20th century

Viticulture was revived in the 1970s onwards, possibly helped by a rising local temperature due to global warming, making many parts of Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, Essex, Suffolk, Berkshire and Cambridgeshire, dry and hot enough to grow grapes of high quality. The first English wines were influenced by the sweet German wines like Liebfraumilch and Hock that were popular in the 70s, and were simply blended white and red sweet wines, which were called cream wine (creams). The largest vineyard in England is Denbies Wine Estate in Surrey, which has 265 acres under vines, and a visitors' centre that is open all year round.

The growth of English wine accelerated in the late 90s, helped by popularity of wine from the new world, especially Australia, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand and South Africa which made consumers in the British Isles more accepting of wines that were not from the traditional wine growing regions of Europe. They were popular by their single vintages, brand labels, and general non-fussiness of the wine. This influenced the English wine industry to copy what happened in the new world and produced good-quality wines with grapes like Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. In 2004 a panel judging European sparkling wines awarded most of the top ten positions to English wines - the remaining positions going to French Champagnes.

Winemaking has also spread to the Midlands and the north of England, with Yorkshire, Shropshire and Lancashire boasting one vineyard each as of 2006.

[edit] Effect on the British economy

Although there has always been a worldwide market for Scotch whisky, most of the wine consumed in Britain is imported from other countries as it is usually hard to grow grapes due to the British climate. However, now that English wine is being produced in larger quantities more people in the British Isles are buying it as opposed to imported wines. It has also proved popular abroad and has helped reduce wine imports and rapidly increase wine exports, which helps to reduce the UK trade deficit.

[edit] Rules of wine labelling

There are several official categories of wine in the UK. For still wines (i.e. not sparkling) there are United Kingdom Table Wine, English Regional Wine, English Quality Wine, Welsh Regional Wine, Welsh Quality Wine. All but UK Table Wine have to go through a testing and tasting procedure before they can be so labeled. For sparkling wines the categories are English Sparkling Wine and English Quality Sparkling Wine with Welsh equivalents. These wines do not have to be tested or tasted before being so labelled.