When Britain’s Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, declared in August of 2018 that English sparkling wines might “soon bring a level of cheer to British drinkers greater than that provided by French Champagne”, his claim might have been dismissed as mere Brexit bravado.

But the truth is, English winemaking is having a major moment. As Wines of Great Britain (WineGB) chairman Simon Robinson declared at London’s Vintners’ Hall in January of the same year, the industry is experiencing “a seismic change”.

Not only are English sparkling wines – which comprise around 70 per cent of the country’s output – attracting global attention by regularly outpointing Champagnes in blind tastings, new vine plantings across the 500-plus commercial vineyards now found in England and Wales are predicted by WineGB to reach a record two million this year.

But perhaps the most striking vote of confidence in British vineyards has come from the venerable French Champagne houses. Since 2015, both Taittinger (established 1734) and Vranken-Pommery (1836) have purchased plots of chalky English soil to set up satellite wineries across the Channel.

The Taittinger announcement, made by company president Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger at Westminster Abbey in 2015, “raised a few eyebrows in Reims when it was announced”, according to winemaker, author and judge Stephen Skelton MW.

Skelton, one of England’s foremost wine experts and producers (he started his first vineyard in the ’70s), consulted to Taittinger and their British agents, Hatch Mansfield, on the deal, securing their 69-hectare site in Kent and even becoming a minor investor in the venture – christened Domaine Evremond.

“Following Taittinger, the floodgates hardly opened,” he notes in the 2019 edition of the seminal Wines of Great Britain, due for release later this year.

“But certainly, tongues were set wagging in Reims and Épernay, and it wasn’t too long before the patter of tiny French feet were heard in England again.”

He’s referring to Vranken-Pommery, which has begun planting a 40-hectare site in Hampshire and is already working with a neighbouring vineyard (owned by WineGB’s chairman Robinson) to release wines under the Louis Pommery sparkling label.

Foreign interest in English soils is not entirely new. In 2003, winemaker Didier Pierson fled Champagne’s hottest ever summer for England’s cooler climes to establish the Meonhill vineyard in Hampshire. Since then, several Champagne houses including Louis Roederer and Billecart-Salmon have eyed English investments, and winemakers from elsewhere in France, Italy and even the US have carried out reconnaissance missions.

Few have actually put down roots yet, though South Africa’s Benguela Cove Winery founded vineyards in West Sussex in 2016. While England’s comparatively cheap land prices are attractive, low yields and lower bottle prices are less so. “Financially it’s still a bit of a knife-edge,” Skelton tells delicious. “It’s not [an investment] for widows and orphans.”

Climate change is a major driver both of foreign interest and optimism among English sparkling wine producers. Forty years ago English summers were too feeble to properly ripen chardonnay grapes; today harvests take place weeks earlier than they have done historically. Meanwhile, a 2016 Harvard study forecast rising summer temperatures could turn southeastern England into the epicentre of European winemaking as French vineyards became too hot to make fine wine.

Skelton’s not convinced climate change is a big factor in French interest, but says it has certainly made English sparkling wines “much, much better quality and much closer to Champagne. And in some cases much better than Champagne.”

While some growers have expressed concern Brexit will severely curb their access to vineyard workers and even winemaking products – French oak barrels, for example – Skelton believes Britain’s impending exit from the single market has “very little implications” for the industry. If anything, English winemakers might regain some control over regulations and naming protocols, he says.

In France there’s a slightly different view, with Comité Champagne, the peak trade body, blaming Brexit for falling UK sales. The British drank four million fewer bottles of Champagne in 2017, while sales of English sparkling wine are booming and production has almost tripled from around six million bottles to a bumper 15.6 million bottles last year, according to WineGB.

That said, it’s unlikely we’ll all be breaking out British bubbles instead of French anytime soon. As Skelton points out: “Champagne makes 375 million bottles a year. We have been making five million bottles a year on average.”