Exporting Wine to France

By David Sapsted
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Sacre bleu, the French are developing a taste for English wine.

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Following a tour of vineyards in south-east England this summer by a group of sommeliers, wine stores in northern France, are beginning to import English vintages. The summer visitors took back samples of whites and rosés from Kent vineyards and subjected them to a blind tasting by members of L'Asociation Sommelier Unione Francais."Many of those taking part — and they are all experts — had never sipped an English wine before," said Jerome Pont, a wine merchant who organised the tasting trip. "But they were astounded at the quality on offer."

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Mr Pont, who owns a wine warehouse business called Franglais just outside Calais, then ordered stock from Chapeldown and Binneden vineyards in Kent to sell alongside his French vintages. He sold out."Around 50 per cent of my customers are from England and they started buying cases — because of tax, I can undercut UK prices," he said. "But then the other half of my clientele are mainly from France.

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My customers tasted the wine inside the warehouse and they started buying it, too."At present, I am actually out of stock but the market is really growing so I have just put in several large orders."He said that he brought fellow sommeliers to Britain because global warming is making the country much more conducive to wine production. "It seems that England is now experiencing the climate necessary to produce good wine," he said."At the moment, it's the white and rosé which are really top class but if these recent weather patterns keep up we may start to see rich and robust reds coming through as fine."

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There are almost 400, mainly small, vineyards in England, mostly in the South East, although several have started in the Midlands and one each in Yorkshire and Lancashire.

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About three million bottles are expected to be produced this year of mainly white wine, with an increasing amount of it sparkling.Earlier this year, Nyetimber Classic Cuvée 1998, from West Sussex, was named the best sparkling wine in the world outside the Champagne region of France at this year's International Wine and Spirit Competition.

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Last year, Didier Pierson, who has vineyards in Avize, south of Epernay, became the first producer from a Champagne house to invest in an English vineyard when he planted 28 acres of grapes in the Meon Valley in Hampshire.