Farming for the Future: Land of fruit and Chardonnay

The UK wine industry is going from strength to strength and pickings could be rich if you have the right skills and maybe a little bottle, reveals Camilla Swift in this article from our membership magazine, My Countryside.

The making of wine in England is by no means a new phenomenon. The Romans first brought vineyards to the British Isles sometime after the Roman invasion of 43 AD. The remains of Roman vineyards have been discovered in Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire, while the Roman governor Suetonius Paulinus is believed to have planted vines at Caerleon, Wales. There are even rumours that vines were planted near Hadrian's Wall.

International trade from France and Italy from the 1300s onwards meant that the English wine market faced extreme competition from abroad. English vineyards and wineries suffered as a result, and most were abandoned or grubbed up.

In the 1950s three men – Ray Barrington Brock, Edward Hyams and George Ordish – dedicated themselves to re-establishing the viticulture sector in England. Experimenting with different grapes, they helped to spread the word and improve both growing methods, and the quality of English grapes.

English viticulture saw a renaissance in the late 1970s and '80s, and on the UK market at least, English wines have seen a real revival in recent years. In 2021, nearly 900 UK vineyards produced 8.95 million bottles of wine.

I say English because currently the UK wine industry is very much England-centric. Wines of Great Britain (WineGB), the national body for the English and Welsh wine industry, states that of the 3,758 hectares under vine in the UK, 3,690 hectares are in England. There are just 66.7 hectares in Wales and 1.3 hectares in Scotland and the Channel Islands.

The hectarage planted with vines in England has more than doubled in eight years and quadrupled since 2000. According to WineGB, the wine industry is one of the fastest-growing agricultural sectors in the UK today.

So, if you did want to take a chance on grapes, is there any space left in the market? Well, it would appear that viticulture is still ripe for investment. WineGB believes there are around 70,000 acres of land in the UK suitable for wine production, and that over the next 20 years the industry will create between 20,000 and 30,000 new jobs. However, you first need to work out what aspect of the wine sector you want to get involved in.

Ed Mansel Lewis, head of viticulture at the real estate agency Knight Frank, suggests that, in practical terms, the best English grape producers are those who have been producing top-class fruit. "They've got the equipment for it because fruit tractors are similar – in terms of size and where they operate – to vineyard tractors. The seasons and the routines around pruning and harvesting are all very similar. So it's a pretty small jump from growing apples or pears to growing grapes. Some of the best grape producers in the UK are top fruit farmers, like Mark Gaskain who grows for the Taittinger family, and Clive Baxter, who grows for Balfour Wines. They are both from several generations of fruit farmers."If your interest in viticulture only extends to growing the fruit, then the opportunity to make money comes directly from the product you deliver to the winery door. However, if this is your plan, you need to make sure the grapes you grow are high quality. As well as measuring grapes by tonnage, wine producers value grapes with a high sugar content – measured using the Oechsle scale – and those with a low acid content. If you're already a top fruit farmer, you probably have strengths when it comes to growing vines, says Ed.

Knight Frank has designed a bespoke mapping platform, which enables them to identify where the best land for growing the best grapes is. "It incorporates things like rainfall, sunshine hours, elevation, the wind direction and the direction the slope falls in," explains Ed. "All of those things feed into what a great vineyard site looks like, so we are able to pinpoint the best sites in the UK."

However, top-quality grapes aren't the only way to enter the UK wine industry. As Simon Thorpe MW, CEO of WineGB highlights. "A key factor in this evolving industry is the stratospheric rise in the importance of wine tourism and the direct-to-consumer sales channel." Direct-to-consumer sales of UK wine now represent 57 per cent of all sales, with cellar door sales stimulating much of this growth.

"Tourism works if you have a brand," says Ed. One way of doing this is by planting a few acres of vines and having your own-label wine made by a nearby winery on a contract basis. "Then you have all the ingredients for an interesting cellar door business. Visitors can tour your vineyard, and if you have a converted barn with a tap room or tasting room you can sell your wine from there."

In areas where viticulture is booming – such as the south east of England – there will be competition for trade. "You really need to do something exciting in order to capture the imagination of a prospective customer," he advises. Examples include hosting exhibitions by local artists, which would encourage customers to purchase your wine, or having a pop-up food market with local produce. You could focus on regenerative agriculture and tree planting, encouraging people to come on family walks and buy wine at the end, or celebrate food by having a cookery school. "You need to work out what your competitive advantage is compared to others nearby."

The other thing to bear in mind before setting off on your wine journey is your end goal. "You start by asking, 'Where do I want to get this? How big do I want to be?'" says Ed. "You need to think carefully about who your customer is and respond to that in a way that makes sense for you."