If you were to imagine a French winemaker, you would imagine Renaud Ruer. A famed producer in his native land, his complexion is as mahogany brown as a Bordeaux barrel, his silk tie as golden as a glass of champagne and his manners as smooth as Saint-Emilion.
But right at this moment he is struggling to be polite.
“Eenglish wine?” he repeats. Yes. “You want to know what ze French think of Eenglish wine?” Yes.
“Well, they would say that you cannot make wine. Firstly,” he waves a Gallic finger, “because you are not known for your wezzer. And secondly, because you are English.”
Though few would phrase it with such economy, many winemakers would agree. At the London Bordeaux tasting where I go to canvass opinion on our wine industry, only one other French winemaker had tasted English wine — and then not with happy results. The vast majority find the idea at best amusing and at worst confusing; a sort of oenological oxymoron.
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Yet last month it was announced that the British Government is giving £1.6 million to fund wine courses for our burgeoning wine industry. For, though the French might not have noticed it yet, we rosbifs have been pouring forth plonk at a rapidly increasing rate: an estimated three million bottles this year alone.
Despite this rapid increase in production, however, expertise has not kept pace. As a result, many in the British wine industry still struggle to tell their airlocks from their elbows. Hence the classes, which will be held at the pleasingly named Plumpton College in Sussex. In happy defiance of Renaud, I sign up immediately.
I arrive at the college on an October day of obediently Keatsian beauty. Vineyards bright with autumn leaves stripe the slopes, while still more vines crawl across the eaves. Above the entrance to the building, a sign reads “Wine Studies Centre”.
It sounds like a euphemism for most universities. But though the title might raise a few smirks, Plumpton’s wine school is serious about its courses. As Chris Foss, its founder and head of wine explains: “This is one of only several of its kind in the world.” Plumpton’s excellence is widely recognised, and it has won a prestigious Decanter award for its wine.
The students learn not only how to make and taste wine but how to plant, pick and prune as well, for Plumpton has ten hectares of vineyards and its own winery. Once they have finished their degrees, the majority will go on to work in the English wine industry. The numbers doing so are increasing each year. When Foss founded the course (to the general mirth of the wine industry) in 1988, there were only six pupils. This year there are more than 100.
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Yet even with a rise in the number of graduates, the industry still lacks the broad base of expertise that it needs. Hence the government’s new Wine Skills Project.
These courses, which will be 90 per cent subsidised by government money, will deliver intense shots of knowledge to students on secondment from the wine industry in day-long sessions. They will learn everything from how to manure and plant vines to grape processing, bottling and label design.
It is hoped that the students will learn as much from each other as from their teachers. “English winemakers are all quite far-flung and don’t often get to talk to each other,” explains Foss. “These courses will act as a sort of forum, enabling them to come together and to discuss their problems and their experiences with their fellow winemakers.”
Pleasingly, I arrive for my lesson not on manuring but on Madeira-tasting day. Chris escorts me to the classroom. Inside, students sit at back-lit laboratory benches. Each has several glasses of wine in front of them, which they swill, sniff and then spit into buckets.
“Wine-tasting,” explains Chris sternly, “is a very important part of all the courses here. It’s not recreational.” Nonetheless, I take my seat with enthusiasm.
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The lecturer, Matthew Hudson, is a stylish fellow with a Salvador Dalí moustache. He begins by producing a purple-shrouded bottle with what can only be called a flourish. Having poured a glass for himself, he passes the bottle among the pupils. “You are going to nail this wine,” he says. The performance (the word “lesson” really doesn’t do it justice) has begun.
The aim of the exercise is to guess the wine, whose identity has been hidden behind the purple cloth. “Colour?” demands Matthew. We pupils study our glasses intently. Wine-coloured, I think to myself. Other pupils are more forthcoming. “A green tinge?” ventures one.
Matthew nods. “And taste?” Here the students really blossom. “Camomile,” says one. “Seaweed,” says another. “Iodine,” says a third. Matthew looks pleased, but not yet satisfied. “Iodine,” he says. “Perhaps . . .” He swills again. “Surely it’s more lustrous than that? Cleaner? This wine is more like ... diving between fresh hotel sheets.” The class nod and slurp. Yes, they murmur, hotel sheets.
Next there is a session in the winery, a place with a Willy Wonka-ish confusion of bubbling bottles and brimming vats. The students, now in overalls and boots, bustle about, pouring shining beads of grapes into the grape crusher. These days, apparently, grapes are not crushed by the feet of merry peasants but in a sterile drum. A large balloon inflates inside the drum, crushing the grapes and releasing a torrent of grape juice into a vat below.
Overseeing the process is Richard Cohen, a second-year student who already, at the tender age of 28, owns his own bar in Soho. He signed on to the wine course for personal and business reasons. “Running a bar can become pretty repetitive,” he says. “This course alleviates that and opens up other avenues in the industry.”
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Since coming on the course Richard has started to run his own training courses. “I can educate my staff so much better, which means that they are more knowledgeable and interested. And that, ultimately, makes my business more profitable.” Which is just the sort of dissemination that, according to Foss, the industry badly needs.
The difficulties faced by English wine must be kept in perspective. As a whole, the industry is doing extremely well. Unlike French winemakers, who are suffering from chronic overproduction, English winemakers are struggling to meet demand.
Several factors are going in their favour. First, the small-scale regional production typical of English wine is very much in vogue. Second, its lighter floral flavours go well with more modern styles of cooking. And perhaps most significantly, in these days of health-conscious drinking, English wine has a very low alcohol content: around 11 to 12 per cent, as opposed to the 14 to 15 per cent of many other wines.
International competitions are now recognising its quality and in recent years English wine has won numerous silvers and bronzes in the International Wine Challenge. Sparkling wine is a particular strength. As Foss explains, “The chalky ground of the South Coast is almost identical to the terroir of the Champagne region.”
And while French wine buyers are not yet beating a path to our door, others are more enthusiastic. At the London wine-tasting where I meet Renaud, I also speak to Justin Howard-Sneyd, head of wine buying at Waitrose. “It’s taking a long time for people to wake up to this idea, but English wine is now extremely good,” he says.
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If current climate patterns continue, it is set to get even better. Perhaps superior even, in some areas, to French wine. For while the appellations of France might be contrôl?e, their weather is not. “Though they won’t acknowledge it yet, I think the French are already having problems with the changing weather,” says Foss. “The styles of their wines have changed tremendously in recent years.”
The temperature increases that are leaving French winemakers all hot and bothered are actually helping us. The word on the growers’ grapevine is that French champagne makers are now buying up tranches of the South Coast of England to migrate to. Soon Shoreham might be making better champagne than Champagne.
As Foss says: “It’s really quite exciting. It’s generally agreed that, if the climate keeps changing in this way, then our wine has a great future.” So English wines are now becoming excellent less in spite of and more because of our infamous wezzer.