English sparkling is hard to beat, but the still wine has depths, too

Black Chalk Wild Rose, Hampshire, England 2021 (£42, The Wine Society)

While its name might suggest the wine club offshoot of a certain proto-fascist TV station, Wine GB is, in fact, an organisation with a bigger and altogether more benign purpose than selling cases of bad booze to the flag-addled, angry and confused. As the trade association devoted to British wine, it is, rather, responsible for overseeing and promoting a rare recent thing: the genuine UK success story that is the domestic wine business. As part of those duties, Wine GB puts on an annual trade tasting in early September, bringing together dozens of producers and hundreds of wines in a spacious venue just off Trafalgar Square. Busy and buzzing with appreciative merchants, sommeliers and press looking to snap up the latest gossip and wines from the ever-growing English and Welsh vineyard, t his year’s event included a room devoted to winners of Wine GB’s annual awards, of which Wild Rose, a silkily bubbled, super-fine rosé fizz from the excellent Hampshire producer Black Chalk, was a real standout.

Bowler & Brolly Sparking Wine of England NV (£9.99, Aldi)

Sparkling wines were the dominant style at the tasting: fizz accounts for around 70% of production and the traditional champagne trio of grape varieties – chardonnay, pinot noir, pinot meunier – have led the planting surge that has taken the total British vineyard close to 5,000 hectares. One development in recent years has been the increase of non-vintage wines, which enables producers to put aside stocks from high-quality vintages (2023, 2025) to help create a consistent style in difficult years (such as the very wet 2024). The beautifully judged Blanc de Blancs NV from Hampshire’s Hambledon (£55, Berry Bros & Rudd) is racy yet rich with bakery shop scents. Aldi’s English NV can’t compete for intensity, but it’s a bright, citrussy alternative to prosecco all the same.

Walgate Pinot Noir, England 2022 (£32.95, Shelved Wine)

The stars of the sparkling firmament (Nyetimber, Gusbourne, Hambledon, Rathfinny, Wiston and Hattingley Valley) dominate coverage of English wine, and the best English fizz really is as good as that produced anywhere. By comparison, the still wines remain a work in progress, struggling on price and reliability versus similar quality wines from more established producers elsewhere. That said, the wines can be genuinely thrilling and distinctive. The Burgundian Chardonnay and Sancerre-alike Bacchus made by Kent producer Chapel Down at its justly acclaimed Kit’s Coty vineyard in the North Downs are very much in that camp; so too the joyously plump-berried, sappy yet silky pinot noir made from grapes grown in Essex’s Crouch Valley and Felixstowe in Suffolk by the super-talented Ben Walgate in Rye in East Sussex.