English wine is booming — even in a dry time for drinkers The Times Jess Jones English wine is booming — even in a dry time for drinkers After some bumper harvests, vineyards are battling to sell what they produce as consumers cut down on alcohol or buy cheaper imports new Dermot and Ana Sugrue, owners of Surge South Downs. Their sparkling wine competes directly with champagne Sarah Weal Jess Jones Monday October 19 2026, 6.01am BST , The Times Listen 0:00 / · 9:00 min Share Share this article Email Twitter Facebook Link Save “There's nothing easy about producing wine in a country like the UK,” says Dermot Sugrue, the winemaker behind Sugrue South Downs, the Sussex-based business he runs with his wife, Ana. “It's a marginal area for viticulture,” the practice of growing and harvesting grapes. Sugrue says the business, founded in 2006, now has an annual turnover of more than ￡1 million and is profitable, although that has taken years to achieve. “I can honestly say that during the first ten years of the Sugrue South Downs project, I made more money selling picking crates to other vineyards than I did from selling wine.” It's why his signature sparkling wine is called The Trouble With Dreams. Most commented 1 Trump claims to be 'negotiating peace' as rift with Zelensky deepens Russia-Ukraine war 92 comments 2 Third of investors ready to stop UK spending after budget Politics 55 comments 3 Douglas Dunn obituary: Scottish poet and academic Obituaries 7 comments 4 New 'We're 34 — we can't wait to start being landlords' Property & Home 3 comments 5 New The beauty expert's all-time favourite hair products Beauty 7 comments Some English sparkling wines, including Sugrue's, have rivalled champagne in industry benchmarking. However, producing it requires considerable upfront investment for land, planting and wineries, and producers may wait seven to nine years after planting their vines before the wine is ready to sell. English chardonnay is giving Burgundy a run for its money Hot, sunny summers have helped fuel production, sprouting consecutive bumper crops. A so-called unicorn harvest in 2023 yielded an estimated 20 to 22 million bottles, according to Wine of Great Britain (Wine GB), the trade association, while the 2025 crop produced 16.5 million . Production has exploded since 2014, when it hovered about five million bottles for a few years. Advertisement The Wine Standards dataset for 2025 reported there are 1,158 vineyards in the UK, up 4 per cent from 2025, and 260 wineries, up 15 per cent. Top stories 1 New Caitlin Moran: People hate me, my hair, my face, my feminism Life 2 New Clodagh McKenna: I always get up at 6am on holiday. I love the calm Inspiration 3 16 of the best safaris in Africa Africa 4 13 of the best affordable hotels in New York New York City 5 The Marylebone pop-up for Christmas-maxxers LUXX Top stories 1 New Caitlin Moran: People hate me, my hair, my face, my feminism Life 2 New The beauty expert's all-time favourite hair products Beauty 3 New Tony Hadley: Fans still threw their knickers on stage after I became a dad Parenting 4 New The ten companies fund managers think will make them billions Saving & Investing 5 New 'Mum is dating a fraudster. What can I do?' Family Finances Sugrue South Downs produces about 60,000 bottles of sparkling wine a year, and says it manages to sell all its stock, mainly directly to consumers, so it can protect as much margin as possible. It has recently also started growing grapes in Essex, where there is low rainfall and the heavy clay soil is good for vines. Sugrue vineyard in West Sussex Sarah Weal The business leases vineyard land on long-term agreements rather than owning it outright to save costs. It hosts high-profile chef pop-ups with Richard Corrigan and Angela Hartnett, and has developed partnerships with boutique hospitality groups, such as The Pig Hotels. The new wine map: what climate change means for growers and drinkers “The fundamental aspect of having a successful wine business is having customers to sell to and that's something that a lot of emerging English wine businesses are feeling the challenge of right now,” Sugrue said, adding: “I think because we're such an emerging winemaking region in the global firmament of wine production.” Advertisement Although Wine GB's 2025 industry report said there had been sales growth of 200 per cent between 2018 and 2024, total sales in 2024 grew at an annual rate of only 3 per cent, reaching 9.1 million bottles — 6.3 million of which were sparkling wine. “[In the UK] we still haven't sold as many as ten million bottles in a single year, and the rate of sale is only growing at 0-5 per cent a year. So stocks keep building,” said Justin Howard-Sneyd, the founder of the Hive Wine Consulting and a former wine buyer for Waitrose. “The problem is not the stock, but the rate of sale and the speed with which that stock is growing.” Many producers may soon have warehouses full to the brim. A structural decline in drinking means appetite for fizz could be going flat, too. Data last December suggested that on average Brits drank 10.2 alcoholic beverages a week last year, the lowest figure since 1990, according to the research group IWSR. English sparkling wine: ￡50. Sparkling wine of England? ￡15 Finding ways to control costs has also been important for Emma Lundie, who runs Forty Hall Vineyard in Enfield, north London. She admitted the business has struggled with financial headaches. Advertisement Three consecutive difficult harvests between 2020 and 2022, hit by late frosts and equipment breakdowns, left the vineyard with little to sell. The vineyard had a good 2023 season but production costs soared. “The winemaking costs on such an epic harvest [have] really been a challenge.” Like many wine producers, Forty Hall suffers from cash flow volatility because money is tied up in wine that can take years to mature, while production and labour costs must be paid far sooner. Emma Lundie, head of operations at Forty Hall Vineyard Felicity Crawshaw The winery has capacity to produce up to 18,000 bottles a year although, in reality, the actual number it makes varies. Sales, Lundie said, fluctuate heavily depending on the year, weather and previous harvests. “It's very competitive … we've got a lot that we still need to try and sell.” The vineyard is a social enterprise too, run on a shoestring with the help of volunteers. “There's nothing you can do but diversify,” Lundie added. Forty Hall offers “hugely popular” vineyard tours and sells its wines at a monthly on-site farmers' market and at local food events. She has also struck a bulk distribution deal, giving them some much-needed upfront cash. “We've sold a sizeable chunk of wine to Naked Wines, which for us was a real blessing. We really needed it.” Another way some are generating extra revenue is through contract winemaking, processing other growers' grapes for them. In addition to its own crop, Halfpenny Green Wine Estate, owned and run by Clive Vickers, presses grapes for more than 100 vineyards across 28 counties. The Staffordshire vineyard, established in 1983, expects to process about 800 tonnes of grapes this year, making it one of Britain's larger wine producers. This harvest has been their best yet. Advertisement Halfpenny Green produces about 150,000 bottles of wine a year from its own vineyards, with about 85 per cent still and the rest sparkling. He said they are “shifting it quite well” across farm shops, delis, independent merchants, wholesalers and supermarkets, as well as selling it on site. Production and sales of English wine are out of kilter, says Clive Vickers Vickers agrees with Sugrue that, because the UK wine industry is relatively young, the sales and production figures are still off-kilter. “Everyone's got to work hard to make them match,” he said, adding that it could take a period of adjustment to the demand, as other wine-producing regions have similarly experienced. “We mustn't carry on overproducing, we've got to find a sales avenue for all this wine before we plant any more.” However, this year he has noticed one negative consequence of the oversupply. “There are a few vineyards that have left bits of crop this year because they're sitting on huge stocks,” he said. “Some have just picked what they need this year rather than all of it.” How to invest in the English wine boom Vickers added the cost of doing business in the UK, which has some of the highest alcohol duties in the world, has exacerbated the pressure. Advertisement Producers pay upwards of ￡2.55 per 75cl bottle in alcohol duty, while a new packaging tax adds up to 13p on still wine and 32p on heavier sparkling wine bottles — and that's before accounting for any other business taxes. At the same time, domestic wines have to compete with cheaper imports from overseas producers that shoppers are already familiar with. The average supermarket bottle of imported still wine costs around ￡7 to ￡9 but small-batch English still wines typically retail between ￡15 and ￡20, the cost driven up by higher land, labour and small-scale production costs. Premium English sparkling wines can command ￡35 to ￡50, pitting them directly against established champagne houses. Even with a 35 per cent surge in overseas exports, WineGB's 2025 report shows international sales account for just 9 per cent of total production. That leaves 91 per cent needing to find British buyers, a volume far too large for the domestic market to swallow without a price correction, Vickers suggested. “There's got to be a price reset I think for the public to drink or buy all the English and Welsh wine currently for sale,” he said. “There just aren't enough people around that are going to spend 35 to 50 quid on a bottle of English fizz.” Business Entrepreneurs Wine Share Share this article Email Twitter Facebook Link Save