The Growth of English Sparkling Wine

Approx 66% of all the wine produced in England is sparkling wine. The largest amount of grapes grown for English Sparkling wine comes from the vineyard of Denbies, the largest single vineyard at 106 ha/265 acres. Nyetimber has the largest estate at approx 177ha/438 acres. While Chapel Down is the largest producer of English sparkling wine, although they buy a large proportion of their grapes.

The 2010 harvest marked the first time sparkling wine production exceeded still wine and the sparkling wine sector continues to grow year on year. Most of the recent vine plantings are for sparkling wine production and based on plantings over the last 8 years, sparkling wine that will become available for sale in the next three years is likely to be more than 5 million bottles, giving the industry retail sales value of approx £100 million.

So the good news is that everything points to English sparkling wine continuing to grow year on year.