Listen to the article
English and Welsh wines have long played in the shadow of their neighbours in Champagne. That discretion is beginning to crack.
European enthusiasts now know it: England produces sparkling wines of a high standard, drawn from the same grape varieties and the same chalk as Champagne. But beyond this positioning, a quiet diversification is under way. The WineGB Awards 2026 assessed 372 wines, revealing a palette far broader than traditional sparkling wines alone — still wines, rosés, single-varietal whites — all gaining in recognition and consistency of quality.
The sector remains young, which affords it a freedom that century-old appellations no longer enjoy. Growers select their plots with close attention to microclimates, to the clay-limestone soils of Sussex or the south-facing slopes of Kent, and experiment with winemaking approaches that diverge from the dominant sparkling model.
In France, curiosity about these wines remains tentative. Yet as climate change pushes the boundaries of viticulture northward, England is no longer a geographical anomaly but an increasingly serious presence on the map of regions to watch.
For an enthusiast building a cellar, it is precisely this emergence phase that makes these wines interesting: prices remain accessible, quality is rising, and discoveries are still there to be made before international recognition fully takes hold.