“We’ve never had frost here,” says Adrian Pike, pointing to rows of vines just beginning to show signs of small buds in the weak Kent spring sun.
The Westwell Vineyard is on the site of a former monastery and is close to the Pilgrims’ Way on the North Downs, the historic route to Canterbury that runs along the top of the hill behind the vineyard.
Pike believes he has been “incredibly lucky” with the terroir: even after heavy winter rain and “mud everywhere,” his fields are “not too bad” because of the chalk soil’s drainage and protection from sharp spring frosts that can kill grape buds to freeze.
“It has to do with the height, it has to do with the trees behind… the Pilgrim Route,” he says. “Frost flows a bit like water; it only touches the land when it has passed us by. The soil here is light and fluffy, full of flint and it is a sun spot.”
Pike, 52, is one of a new breed of entrepreneurs who have invested in English vineyards as the climate warms and vineyards emerge as far north as Yorkshire and Scotland.
The climate crisis led to Britain experiencing its second hottest year on record last year, with rising temperatures creating increasingly ideal conditions for grape growing in Britain. But extreme heat also threatens to devastate typical wine regions, such as areas in Spain, Italy and Southern California, where harvests are expected to plummet.
“I don’t want to put a positive spin on climate change because it’s not a positive thing,” Pike says. “With every degree it rises here, the temperature changes and elsewhere the weather changes. People who grow in Burgundy are confronted with things they have never experienced before due to the unpredictability of the weather.”
Pike turned to viticulture after a career in the music industry. In the mid-1990s he lived in London’s Primrose Hill and rushed between seven gigs a night on a Vespa scooter. He co-founded the record label Moshi Moshi, which released Hot Chip and Florence + the Machine, and also ran the music distributor State51 Conspiracy.
“There were a lot of bands and an explosive scene at the time,” he says. “We had creation [records] at the end of our road and Primal Scream in the pub every weekend. It was a nice time.”
When Pike left the music industry, he became interested in English wine, retrained and in 2017 became director of Westwell, which now produces more than 50,000 bottles a year from four different grape varieties: Pinot Meunier, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Ortega. “I didn’t think wine would be a career, but then it turned out it could be,” he says.
He is part of a booming industry as the climate crisis, the lure of tax breaks and a new asset class transform winemaking. Knight Frank, the real estate agents, calls Britain the fastest growing wine region in the world. Vineyards produce the fastest growing edible agricultural crop in England, according to recent data from the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs, and grapes represent 36% of England’s soft fruit harvest.
There are now 943 vineyards in Britain, almost three times as many as 20 years ago, according to a report published in June 2023 by WineGB, the body that promotes the growth of the British wine sector.
WineGB reported a 74% increase in vine plantings to 4,000 hectares (9,884 acres) in the past five years, and plantings are expected to reach 7,600 hectares by 2032, yielding a potential yield of 24.7 million bottles deliver. According to WineGB, England and Wales more than doubled wine production from 5.3 million to 12.2 million bottles between 2017 and 2022.
There have been vineyards in England since Roman times and wine has been produced commercially since the 1960s, but had a dubious reputation because the wine largely came from Germanic grape varieties that thrive in cooler climates.
English wine began to shake off its bad name in the 1980s when wine producers such as Nyetimber moved away from German grapes and began planting varieties such as Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and English sparkling wine began to win awards.
Ian Sargent, who set up Laurel Vines, a vineyard near Driffield, East Yorkshire, says that when he started planting in 2011 he was the sixth or seventh vineyard in Yorkshire. God’s own province now has 24. He is chairman of WineGB’s Midlands and Northern region, which had 28 members when he took over in 2015 and now has 72, including two in Scotland. He knows an entrepreneur who plans to build a vineyard near Inverness this year.
Sargent started in 2011 with 2,000 vines and now has four hectares, with 15,000 vines.
“Climate change has been very noticeable,” he says. “At our first planting we had German vines, but five years ago we could see the changes in temperature and started planting pinot noir and chardonnay. I and five other vineyards have set up a wine route in Yorkshire. If you had said 10 years ago that we would have a Yorkshire wine route I wouldn’t have believed you.”
The climate is predicted to continue to warm. A December 2022 report from Reading University found that the impact of climate change means that a fifth of the UK could have suitable weather conditions to grow chardonnay grapes for still wines by 2050.
Alex Biss, a PhD student who led the project, says that a good chardonnay vintage is not currently reliably available in Britain “but climate change looks set to change that in the not too distant future”. He says: “The fact remains that climate change is very likely to lead to a further expansion of wine growing in Britain.” Areas most likely to reliably produce high-quality Chardonnay wine by 2050 include South East England, East England and Central England.
The research model developed by Biss and Richard Ellis, professor of crop sciences, has identified that 20-25% of British land could be suitable for chardonnay grapes by 2050. This compares to the current figure of just 2% in the model covering the 2010-2010 period. Period 2019.
Nicola Bates, CEO of WineGB, says two-thirds of its members are smaller producers with fewer than 12,000 bottles. There are estimates that the sector will employ 30,000 people (full-time equivalents) in 2040, compared to around 2,500 today, including from tourism and hospitality.
Demand has led to vineyards gaining importance as a new asset class, helped by tax breaks. In a report last year, property agents Strutt & Parker said that the number of inquiries about buying a vineyard had tripled in the past year and that an estimated total of £480 million had been invested in vineyards and wineries over the past five years.
Nick Watson, head of viticulture at Strutt & Parker, says: “The pace of plantings has been particularly dramatic over the last five years and some of that investment has come from people wanting to set up a small vineyard as a hobby or small business, from people who have a want to set up a small vineyard as a hobby or small business. have had a successful career elsewhere.”
The value of agricultural land in south-east England has risen to around £10,000-£12,000 per acre (0.4 hectares), so the value of land suitable for vines has also risen and is now selling for £16,000 to £20,000 per acre. The best vineyards can sell for £35,000 per hectare planted, the report says.
Peter Harker, partner at consultant Saffery, says the increase in vineyard investment came from two areas: individuals and larger producers.
“We see wealthy private investors with a rural background or people who want to do something different and are attracted to the romance of running a vineyard,” he says. “Their main motivation is to do something interesting and fun with their money, and they are willing to wait because the returns can be quite slow.”
Investors included city financiers. Michael Spencer, the former Conservative party treasurer and founder of the financial group Nex, formerly known as Icap, owns almost 30% of Chapel Down, which floated on the Aim share market last year. Chapel Down owns, leases and farms 414 hectares of vineyards in South East England. Eric Heerema, a former lawyer and asset manager, owns its biggest rival, Nyetimber, while former banker Nicholas Coates co-founded sparkling winemaker Coates & Seely.
American and French producers are also buying up land in the Southeast. Last year, California-based wine company Jackson Family Wines, owner of the Kendall-Jackson brand and wineries in the US, Australia and South Africa, acquired 26 hectares of land in Essex, where it plans to grow chardonnay and pinot noir vines. plants.
In 2015, Taittinger champagne bought land in Kent from where it will launch its sparkling English wine Domaine Evremond and is expected to produce its first English-made sparkling wine brand this year. Louis Pommery had already bought land in Alresford, Hampshire in 2010.
Another factor encouraging wealthy individuals to invest in vineyards is the agricultural property exemption (APR) rules, which allow residents of Britain to pass on agricultural land, including vineyards and woodlands, without having to pay inheritance tax. The tax laws are intended to ensure families can continue farming without inheritance taxes, but have proven attractive to wealthy investors looking to pass on their assets.
However, Peter Harker, partner at consultant Saffery, says this is often just one reason for private investors to buy vineyards. “I would say it’s one factor. It’s a bonus, but not the reason why people do it,” he says.