English Wine

Fully revised and updated by Oz, with new entries on key wineries, vineyards and producers from around the country.

’It’s brilliant. Exactly what’s wanted. -’ Hugh Johnson

One of the great pleasures of wine is to drink it where it is grown and made. The opportunity to meet growers, winemakers and winery owners is what draws people to visit wineries and to ’have an experience in the vineyard’. This is your essential guide to find out about England and its world beating sparklers and still wines that have captivated the wine world.

The modern view of English wine is of a country amazingly blessed with vast tracts of soil suitable for viticulture, much of it almost indistinguishable from the chalky slopes of Champagne and Chablis, and of a country taking full advantage of the vagaries of climate change to ripen Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to levels perfect for sparkling wine, and increasingly excellent still wines. this book helps you find the best English and Welsh wines, from fizz, whites, some impressive reds and even dessert and orange wines.

The book includes:
-Exciting Times How it used to be; The Nyetimber effect; Climate: is it almost perfect now?; Location is key; Planting
like made; A question of style: sparkling or still; and Grape varieties: a race to the top.
-British Bubbles What is needed to make good fizz; Champagne, the original fizz; Bubbles and how they’re created.
-A Tour Of the Regions - covers personal experiences and reflections from Oz’s many years of visiting talented and passionate producers up and down the country. From Yorkshire to the far west of Cornwall and across to Wales, a small but dynamic part of the UK’s wine movement, Oz recommends wines he has enjoyed and found interesting and encourages you to try for yourself.

Oz is one of the world’s leading wine experts, known for his phenomenal palate, irreverent style, accurate predictions, and enthusiasm for life in general and wine in particular. He is the author of many award-winning books on wine. Before wine took over his life in 1984, Oz was a full-time actor and singer, appearing in West End hit shows and touring with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Alongside his entertaining television and radio broadcasts, including ’Food and Drink’, ’Oz and James’ with James May and James Martin’s Saturday Morning, he presents a series of concerts, Drink to Music! with the acclaimed Armonico Consort. Oz is also sports mad. He was awarded an OBE in 2020.