Hugh Johnson: ‘Fizz comes very high on my comfort list’

I have a few. I used to brag that I’d taste anything that came with a cork; these days I’m a bit more conservative. Fizz comes very high on my comfort list – and not necessarily Champagne. England has a dozen labels these days that give me the refreshment and uplift I’m looking for. I find people often complain that ‘it’s just as expensive as Champagne’. Not far off, I grant you, but then it has the same costs, above all fermentation in the bottle and all the handling that entails. The only element that can be dramatically different here is the cost of suitable land; in Champagne at least €1m per hectare (Groupe Safer-SSP, 2023). In England, reportedly something closer to £50,000.

Other comfort zone wines? Perhaps Chardonnay offers fewest disappointments; you could almost say wherever it comes from, from Auckland to Middlesex. And when Cabernet finds the happy medium between raw blackcurrant and figgy overripeness, it has no rival as the top working red. And palo cortado Sherry is treated as an essential in this household.

It’s hardly surprising that fizz is the category of English wine that is first to establish itself first as seriously good. So far, at least, England’s vinous progress is top-down. Our still whites haven’t yet quite produced show models to follow, and our reds, often struggling to reach full ripeness, are so far considered a bit thin. The best Essex Pinot Noir, notably from the Danbury Ridge that looks south over the valley of the Crouch, has everything you could hope for – and costs nearly as much as good Burgundy. You don’t save a great deal of money by staying close to home.

I do feel solidarity, though, with the courageous souls who stake so much on challenging history and the English weather. Over the centuries it has been our (that is British) taste and thirst that has steered the reputations and fortunes of many, perhaps most, classes of European wines. If anyone can distinguish worthwhile wines, and regions with promise, it’s us. Now we can produce them, too, the future looks brilliant.

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