Britain’s wine producing industry is in surprisingly good heart after the tremors of lockdown judging by today’s WINEGB tasting at the Royal Horticultural Halls in London. It is not obvious why this should be so as production has dropped from 13m bottles in 2018 to only 8.7m bottles in 2020 mainly due to bad weather Some say 2021 could be the worst since 2012. However sales in 2020 were 30% up on the previous year and new plantings of vines are predicted to be 1.4m this year. This is clearly a very bold investment for the future
in an industry that is like no other not least because of the often very large timelag between planting and sales.
Lockdown hit trade sales badly but triggered a boom in online sales and, as vineyards re-opened, helped vineyard tourism and cellar door sales. Exports are also on the rise.
Our sparkling wine vineyards are festooned with gold medals and the quality is good enough to charge premium prices. The big new thing is that our red wines – mainly Pinot Noir, the Bergundy grape – are now winning top prizes, something that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago
The worry is price. You are pushed to find any English or Welsh wines under £10 a bottle though there are some – like Brightwell in Oxfordshire, New Hall in Essex, Halfpenny Green, Shropshire and the Wine Society that just about manage it.
So far this doesn’t seem to have mattered as most vineyards say that can sell all they can produce though there are rumblings about overstocking. They are clearly helped by the encouraging way customers are keen to buy local food and wines, a trend that lockdown and Brexit have encouraged.
It is also due to the fact that there is a huge amount of spending power in the economy thanks to freewheeling increases in the money supply which at some stage will have to stop. Put this together with the millions of new of vines being planted and there is clearly a risk that oversupply in the future might lead to a price cutting war. None of this pessimism was evident among people I spoke to today and let’s face it we still produce only a small fraction of the wines we consume so there is all to play for. Let’s hope the bandwagon keeps rolling.
Victor Keegan 
Good to see wine blog getting going again as well as the wine industry!