(Chilham) Far from its native Champagne, the prestigious Taittinger house inaugurated on Thursday the cellar of its Evremond estate in the south-east of England, on land increasingly favorable to the planting of vines under the effect of climate change.
The peaceful hill of Kent where this modern building is perched, surrounded by around sixty hectares of vineyard on the hillsides, has never been as lively as on this inauguration morning, in which the Duchess of Edinburgh Sophie.
“It’s the story of ten years of friendship between two families and two companies,” summarizes Vitalie Taittinger, president of the house, whose father co-founded the estate with its importer in the United Kingdom, the boss of Hatch. Mansfield, Patrick McGrath.
The latter remembers “that ten years ago, we were talking about the emergence of English sparkling wine […] when Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger said to me: “What if we set up a project here?” “.
Together, they chose this lush area, often nicknamed “England’s orchard”, near the charming village of Chilham. The estate’s land was purchased in 2015, and the apple trees that grew on these hillsides gave way to vines.
In March 2025, the first 100,000 bottles of Domaine Evremond English Sparkling Wine, an English sparkling wine, will be sold in the United Kingdom for around fifty pounds.
This will be “very elegant, but without comparison with champagne”, whose name it could not have taken, due to the rules of the appellation, underlines Vitalie Taittinger.
It is, according to her, “the first champagne house” to create such a project in the United Kingdom “from scratch” – even if the Champagne company is not the only one to express an interest in the British terroir and its sparkling wine.
Thus the Pinglestone estate, which extends over around forty hectares north-east of Winchester in Hampshire, belongs to the Champagne house Vranken-Pommery.
It produces its Louis Pommery England there, a sparkling white wine that can only be found on shelves in the United Kingdom, and whose sales have increased by 9% in 2023.
“Very trendy”
In Kent, the soil is limestone, rich in chalk, which promotes water drainage, avoids excessive humidity and makes it ideal for pinot noir, meunier and chardonnay grape varieties.
This also resembles that of Champagne, which facilitates the establishment of French houses, even if its maritime and windy climate should bring more acidity to the wine.
With the rise in temperatures caused by climate change, the vine has been able to flourish in these latitudes, the sunniest in England.
“There is no “good side” to climate change, but we could say that here, we see rather positive effects” for the cultivation of vines, comments Patrick McGrath.
The harvest should begin within two weeks and soon, the dozens of stainless steel vats in the basement of the building will be filled with grape juice for fermentation.
On the other side of the Channel, where the harvest is almost complete, French wine production is expected to show a “clear decline” of 18% year-on-year in 2024 due to “particularly unfavorable” climatic conditions, the ministry recently indicated. of Agriculture.
That of the Champagne vineyards should decline by 16% over one year.
“Increasingly intense extreme climatic events, such as heat waves or torrential rains, cause significant damage” and spare no French region, recalled the Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Agriculture. environment (INRAE) in March 2024.
The popularity of these sparkling wines with the British and Scandinavians also whets appetites.
Still the work of pioneers around thirty years ago, viticulture has taken root in the south of England and Wales, with more than 1000 vineyards in 2023 and a vineyard area which has more than doubled in ten years (+123%), now at 4,200 hectares.
Sales of English sparkling wines, which make up two-thirds of national production, have jumped 187% since 2018, industry organization WineGB said in July.
“We feel like we’re becoming more and more trendy, and it’s fantastic to be able to combine the tradition of champagne with the novelty of English sparkling wine,” rejoices its president, Nicola Bates, to AFP.