Kent is having a champagne moment: ‘English wine has gone from a joke to world-class’

French champagne house Taittinger is helping produce a premium fizz in the Garden of England, and now visitors can visit the beautiful winery and sample it

T he grapes are turning purple on tall green vines, which stretch down towards the distant flint-and-limestone tower of Chilham church. These rows of Pinot Meunier, destined for English sparkling wine, are 51% owned by French champagne house Taittinger. “England is now the most exciting wine region,” says host and sales executive Hilary Sharp as she leads me around Domaine Evremond vineyard, which opened its visitor centre last year to coincide with the launch of its first wine.

In his 2023 book Vines in a Cold Climate , drinks writer Henry Jeffreys charts the rise of English wine “from a joke to world-class in 30 years”. The book opens with an alcohol-fuelled scene of vine-planting at Domaine Evremond in May 2017: unseasonably cold, rainy, muddy, with rambling anecdotes from anglophile Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger about “English women encountered in his misspent youth”. The vineyard is named for the exiled French aristocrat Charles de Saint-Évremond , a symbol of hedonistic Anglo-French cooperation. The bon vivant introduced champagne to England and party-loving Charles II made him governor of Duck Island in St James’s Park.

We stroll past a Land Rover, parked up by a windbreak of crab apple trees. Harriet opens the back to reveal a tray of glasses with a chilled bottle of Domaine Evremond’s Edition I , and we’re soon sipping creamy, citrussy fizz with a view of vines. It tastes great to me, but I’m no expert.

Wine critic Jancis Robinson gave it a “distinguished” 16/20 and Jeffreys, in his Substack, Drinking Culture , describes “bright green apple fruit with a reassuring bass note of croissant and Marmite”. King Charles III toasted French president Emmanuel Macron with this wine at a state banquet last summer.

Taittinger’s vineyard director, Christelle Rinville, supervises the vines at Domaine Evremond, regularly taking Le Shuttle from Champagne and enthusing about flinty Kentish subsoils. One of the companies that dug through chalk to make the Channel tunnel excavated Evremond’s 25-metre-deep cellars, where 1.5 million bottles can stay cool around the UK’s first subterranean winery.

An elegant umbrella-shaded terrace outside the chalk-cliff walls of the winery has long rustic tables with vases of wildflowers. Visitors can sample the wine (£12.50 a glass, £55 a bottle) from Wednesday to Sunday and there are year-round tours and tastings . Sitting here under blue skies, among banks of yarrow, knapweed, vetch and wild carrot scorched by the relentless sun, it doesn’t feel very English.

Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent . The unirrigated vines (unlike many other crops) seem to be thriving, and the harvest will be up to three weeks early. Jeffreys writes: “Currently the climate in south-east England is similar to that of Champagne in the 1970s.” Optimal latitudes for wine are supposed to be 30 to 50 degrees, with Champagne at the northerly end of the range. Chilham sits at 51 degrees north.

The vineyard is a half-hour walk through fields from the village, with its cafes, pubs and railway station, where only the front four carriages fit next to the short platform. Bearded butter-yellow cobs of sweetcorn are bursting out of pale green husks beside the path. I loop back to Chilham through Perry Wood . Just beyond the vines, I can see an old oasthouse through branches laden with rosy gala apples. The land was bought in 2015 from the fruit-growing Gaskain family, whose managing director, Mark Gaskain, oversees day-to-day operations in the vineyards as well as producing about 70 million apples a year.

Further on, an orchard of plums is drooping under the weight of purple fruit and crates are stacked up ready for harvest. In the hedges, sprawling hops and honey-scented wild clematis tangle with reddening rosehips and sweet, wine-dark blackberries. Sparrows snack on early-ripened hawthorn under arching beech and sweet chestnut trees, ancient ivy-wreathed hedge maples and squirrel-haunted hazels. Huge clumps of mistletoe hang from towering poplars.

Cottage gardens are heady with late summer roses, scented lavender, aromatic catnip. I wander past wisteria-clad walls and a row of mud-built house martin nests with late fledglings still cheeping under half-timbered eaves while gathering swallows twitter on the wires.

Deputy church warden Lynda Twaite shows me round the flint-walled St Mary’s , pointing out memorials and a battered old school table, graffitied by 18th-century kids. The pilgrim route to Canterbury runs through the lime- and yew-shadowed churchyard. Across the square, I peer through the gates at creeper-covered Jacobean Chilham Castle. Its gardens , landscaped by Capability Brown, now include a new vineyard.

Before heading to the Woolpack Inn for the night, I take an evening stroll by the River Stour, with a view of weatherboarded Chilham Mill framed by willowherb and ripe elderberries. The river sparkles in the sun and turquoise damselflies hover among loosestrife and waterlilies.

The Woolpack’s garden has a Mediterranean feel, with pink hydrangeas, agapanthus and a 600-year-old olive tree. The brick-walled bar has a curving window seat, weathered oak beams and is stuffed with prints and plants and quirky lighting. After a multimillion-pound renovation a couple of years ago, suites and bedrooms upstairs are named after Kentish vineyards, while the big rooms in Rose Cottage, across the lane, come with their own private gardens.

I sit in the leafy shade with a “Woolly cheeseboard” on a slice of tree trunk. As much cheese-based installation as meal, its applewood-smoked and creamy goat are artfully arranged among crackers, olives, nuts, dried fruit, chutneys and tangy homemade pickles. To go with it, there are pints of Shepherd Neame’s toffee-appley Master Brew from down the road in Faversham, or glasses of the local cuvée at cellar door prices.

Domaine Evremond helped found the Wine Garden of England , a collaboration of Kent vineyards. August 2026 also saw the launch of a new tourism initiative, the Kentish Wine Way , encouraging people to visit “England’s largest and most awarded wine region”. The county has 120 commercially active vineyards and more than 25% of Britain’s vines by area, with last year’s harvest producing more than five million bottles. From the train window next day, after hours of walking through wooded hills and burdened orchards, several vineyards roll past, glowing in the evening sunlight.

Accommodation was provided by the Woolpack Inn (doubles from £140 B&B ) and some transport by Southeastern (advance tickets from London St Pancras from £16 each way )

Balfour produced the first English wine to win a gold medal and a trophy at the International Wine Challenge for its 2004 Brut Rosé. Most days, you can pick up a map at the Cellar Door and wander free around the vineyards, orchards, wildflower meadows and ancient oakwoods, or book a range of experiences (from £15pp for a self-tutored tasting). There’s a free shuttle bus to Balfour from Marden train station Friday to Sunday (45 mins from London or Canterbury), and car-free visitors get 20% off the year-round tours and tastings.

Five miles from Sissinghurst Castle Garden , the vineyard at Biddenden is the oldest in Kent. Drinks journalist Henry Jeffreys writes that the Barnes family are “apple growers who moved into grapes in 1969 when Joyce Barnes … heard a segment about English viticulture on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and decided to plant some vines”. You can still buy all kinds of fancy apple juice and cider here, as well as a range of experiences. Most run from May to September (from £15 for a self-guided tour and tasting flight) with a new behind-the-scenes production tour and tasting added this year for the colder months (£30).

Chapel Down , near Tenterden, is England’s largest wine producer, with bottles in numerous supermarkets, made using fruit from more than 700 acres of vineyards across south-east England. A half-hour taxi ride from Ashford International, it offers various tours and tastings, including a cheese and wine pairing (£70).

Ruth and Charles Simpson started making wine in Languedoc in 2002 and, since 2012, in Kent, which they call “one of the most dynamic wine-producing regions of the world”. Bookable sessions include tastings (from £25) on a glass-walled mezzanine floor in the winery with velvet sofas and an optional helter-skelter slide to get back down after sampling their still and sparkling wines.

On the edge of the Kent Downs, Westwell is close to Charing station and a short walk from the Pilgrims’ Way. The vineyard is known for its experimental approaches, including wild yeasts, small-scale production and cloudy, naturally sparkling Pet Nats . Alongside regular tours, there are Friday pizza nights and seasonal supper clubs. Tour and tasting £28.