Vineyard pitches English wine against Champagne

A vineyard is to hold a Battle of Waterloo “taste-off” pitching sparkling wine made in the Surrey Hills against Champagne from France, as English Wine Week gets under way.

High Clandon Estate is holding the tasting contest - named after the battle that saw Napoleon’s French army defeated by Lord Wellington in 1815 - on Saturday.

Sybilla Tindale, co-owner of the High Clandon Estate, said it was thought there were now more than 1,000 vineyards across England.

She said the bulk of them were in the South East.

Saturday's taste-off will be held under a marquee overlooking wildflower meadows, with views over the Surrey Hills and all the way to London, she said.

People will know what they are tasting and victory will be judged by a show of hands, she said.

It is the fourth year the event has run and Ms Tindale said: "I don't think Champagne could ever be defeated."

But she said: "So far in the Battle of Waterloo, Britain has won the day."

Champagne took off in the 1700s with quality and advertising tightly-controlled, which was how it built its aura, she explained.

She said England still needed to find its own voice and come up with a name for its sparkling wine, adding: "Winemaking in Britain only really got going in the 1980s. We are younger than the silicone chip."

Ms Tindale said the growth in English wine was partly down to training. Plumpton College in Lewes has trained winemakers since the 1990s, she said.

Climate change was also partly responsible, she added, with temperatures in the South East said to be the same as they were in Champagne in the 1970s and 1980s.

"And we are discovering we are very good at making a really high quality sparkling wine," she added. "We enter competitions and we come out holding gold."

Events for English Wine Week, which runs between 15 and 23 June, include a wine fair in Hawkhurst, tours at the Rathfinny Wine Estate in Sussex and a "summer spectacular" on Saturday and Sunday along the Surrey Hills wine route.

As part of the week-long celebration a tasting event "dedicated to the very best still and sparkling wines of our own country", takes place on Tuesday in Tunbridge Wells in Kent.

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