Woodchester Valley Vineyard

English wine was a joke within living memory, and the joke has stopped. Woodchester Valley is part of the reason. Fiona Shiner planted a single acre in the steep valleys above Stroud in 2007 and kept planting; the vineyard now runs to some forty-five acres across three south-facing sites, with around ten varieties in the ground.

The sparkling wines are made the long way, by the same method as Champagne, and left on the lees for fifteen months at least before they are sold. The still wines have won at a level that used to be closed to England entirely: the 2021 Sauvignon Blanc took first in its class at an international tasting, against the producers who invented it.

The slopes that grow it are the old cloth valleys, where fast water once ran the mills and the rows of vines now catch the afternoon sun. It is a new use for very old ground, and the ground seems to have taken to it.

The Cotswolds has always made its money from what grows well on a hillside and keeps quietly until it is ready. Once it was wool. Now, among other things, it is this.