Canadian reacts to English Wine

I’d driven past vineyards in England without really making the connection that the country made its own wine. Then my mum came to visit, a friend suggested a wine tasting, and I booked one. We had a great time, and afterwards I wanted to try more.

For this tasting at home, I bought a rosé, a white and a sparkling wine. I wasn’t trying to compare three identical styles, and I am definitely not a wine connoisseur. I wanted different things to taste. The biggest surprise turned out to be a still white, which wouldn’t normally have been my first choice.

Finding English bottles took some work

I had a frustrating time in Tesco’s wine section. I kept scanning labels and turning bottles around to find out where they came from, passing wines from Australia, Argentina, France and Italy before finding something English. I was there for so long that I wondered what the staff must have thought.

That was my experience in that shop when I filmed, rather than a claim about every supermarket now. But it made me wish English supermarkets gave more space to British wines. Chapel Down was a name I’d seen plenty of times in Kent, yet I couldn’t get the bottle I wanted in that Tesco. I thought we’d ended up ordering it through Ocado instead.

The rosé was nice, but sweet for me

First was a Tesco Finest English rosé from Balfour, the 2023 Five Oak Lane. I paid £12 at the time. The label named a father-and-son winemaking team, which I liked, and the wine tasted nice. Those were already fairly promising beginnings.

I found it fruity and sweet, perhaps a bit too sweet for my taste. The label had more elaborate descriptions, but my own vocabulary wasn’t going much further than “this tastes nice” and “fruity”. I didn’t have lots of English wines to compare it with, and I would happily drink it. It just wasn’t the one that shocked me.

Chapel Down Bacchus was the surprise

I’d first heard of Bacchus at the tasting with Mum, so when I saw that Chapel Down made one, I wanted to try their 2023 bottle. I recognised the producer’s name without having tried its wine before. I poured it into a shorter glass and took a sip.

Oh my God. That was really good. The fruit flavour jumped out, and I kept coming back to grapefruit. Then I read the label, which listed elderflower, grapefruit and melon, and immediately started tasting elderflower too. You know when reading a word makes you notice it? That happened.

I don’t usually go towards white wine because it hasn’t been something that particularly excited me. This one did. The Bacchus I remembered from the earlier vineyard tasting had been much sharper, whereas this was different without being boring or flavourless. I was surprised that two versions could give me such different experiences.

The snack pairing wasn’t sophisticated. I’d recently tried Cheez-Its Snapped in cheese and chilli, which I loved after finding the plain cheese version disappointing. I thought they went so well with the Bacchus that the label ought to mention them alongside its proper food suggestions. Not sure they’d take me up on that.

Would I pay more for local bubbles?

The last bottle was an English sparkling wine from Kingscote in West Sussex. It was £18, or £14 with a Clubcard, when I bought it. I liked the bubbles and found it fruity in a different way from the Bacchus, with a pleasant, fairly sweet taste. It wasn’t as startling as the white, but I was probably still comparing everything with that surprise.

I’d happily have it instead of Prosecco. We didn’t drink loads at home, and one of our special-occasion traditions was Prosecco and sausage rolls on Christmas morning. When Mum visited, we’d do an early Christmas with her too. We even wrote the occasion on the cork and kept it in a little vase.

That made price worth thinking about. While filming, I looked up Prosecco in a similar-sized bottle on Tesco’s website and found cheaper options, including one below £6. The English sparkling wine cost noticeably more. Whether I would pay the difference depended on the budget, even though I liked the idea of buying something local with a story behind it.

For an occasional bottle, I could see a place for it. The rosé was pleasant, the sparkling wine was something I’d enjoy again, and the Bacchus was the one I couldn’t stop being surprised by. I’d opened up an interest I hadn’t expected, and I wanted another tasting.

Watch the English white wine that surprised me more than the bubbles in the original video.