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Finland, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia and the US. British sparkling wines have been named “best in the world” nine times in the past 12 years, although Mike Roberts is gracious enough to admit that Champagne is not always considered in the reckoning as the elite French producers prefer to have their own dedicated contests.
BEST IN THE WORLD
In 2010, however, Ridgeview won the Decanter World Wine Awards for the Best Sparkling Wine, including Champagne, an accolade that gives Roberts understandable satisfaction. Last year the company won the trophy for Best Sparkling Wine in the World for the third time in the International Wine and Spirit Competition. The long list of awards going back to 1996 to be found on its website tells its own story.
As chairman of the English Wine Producers, Roberts is ideally placed to look at the big picture for our national winemakers. Although wine has been made in England since Roman times, the industry is in a state of rapid growth as many new arrivals of the last decade or so have been attracted by the positive coverage of the contemporary phenomenon. The current area planted – all in southern England as it is impossible to grow vines commercially north of the 50° latitude -
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has produced 3 to 4 million bottles for sale in 2013. The area yet to be planted or to come into production is expected to increase this to around 5m in 2015. While this is impressive progress, the larger output will still only be the equivalent of 14% of the imports to the UK of Champagne . We British certainly like our fizz. Each year we are the world’s largest importer of French bubbly, bringing over the Channel 36m bottles of Champagne worth about £407m. Although the Champagne region has only 30,000 hectares (about 74,100 acres) under cultivation, it exports globally 135m bottles worth around £1.68 billion. Total French wine exports amount to 1.7bn bottles at a value of at least £3.6bn. Despite their rapid growth, English wines have a long way to go to get near the French production levels.
BIG POTENTIAL IN CHINA
Roberts is mindful that the world’s biggest consumer of wine is China, which glugs down a staggering 6.4bn bottles each year. France, in second place, manages only 3.8bn bottles. The UK trails the USA, Italy and Germany in sixth place; we see off about 1.8bn bottles a year. But Roberts sees the big potential still in China because currently its annual consumption per head of population is a measly half a litre. The French drink 8.14 litres of wine per person
“I’ve been warned that we might already be suffering in China from counterfeiters producing wine with our labels on the bottles. I suppose it is a form of flattery”
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