The grapes are turning purple on tall inexperienced vines, which stretch down in direction of the distant flint-and-limestone tower of Chilham church. These rows of Pinot Meunier, destined for English glowing wine, are 51% owned by French champagne home Taittinger. “England is now essentially the most thrilling wine area,” says host and gross sales govt Hilary Sharp as she leads me round Domaine Evremond winery, which opened its customer centre final yr to coincide with the launch of its first wine.
In his 2023 e-book Vines in a Cold Climate, drinks author Henry Jeffreys charts the rise of English wine “from a joke to world-class in 30 years”. The e-book opens with an alcohol-fuelled scene of vine-planting at Domaine Evremond in Might 2017: unseasonably chilly, wet, muddy, with rambling anecdotes from anglophile Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger about “English girls encountered in his misspent youth”. The winery is called for the exiled French aristocrat Charles de Saint-Évremond, a logo of hedonistic Anglo-French cooperation. The bon vivant launched champagne to England and party-loving Charles II made him governor of Duck Island in St James’s Park.
We stroll previous a Land Rover, parked up by a windbreak of crab apple bushes. Harriet opens the again to disclose a tray of glasses with a calming bottle of Domaine Evremond’s Edition I, and we’re quickly sipping creamy, citrussy fizz with a view of vines. It tastes nice to me, however I’m no professional.
Wine critic Jancis Robinson gave it a “distinguished” 16/20 and Jeffreys, in his Substack, Drinking Culture, describes “shiny inexperienced apple fruit with a reassuring bass notice of croissant and Marmite”. King Charles III toasted French president Emmanuel Macron with this wine at a state banquet final summer season.
Taittinger’s winery director, Christelle Rinville, supervises the vines at Domaine Evremond, recurrently taking Le Shuttle from Champagne and enthusing about flinty Kentish subsoils. One of many corporations that dug by means of chalk to make the Channel tunnel excavated Evremond’s 25-metre-deep cellars, the place 1.5 million bottles can keep cool across the UK’s first subterranean vineyard.
A sublime umbrella-shaded terrace exterior the chalk-cliff partitions of the vineyard has lengthy rustic tables with vases of wildflowers. Guests can pattern the wine (£12.50 a glass, £55 a bottle) from Wednesday to Sunday and there are year-round tours and tastings. Sitting right here underneath blue skies, amongst banks of yarrow, knapweed, vetch and wild carrot scorched by the relentless solar, it doesn’t really feel very English.
Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent. The unirrigated vines (not like many different crops) appear to be thriving, and the harvest will likely be as much as three weeks early. Jeffreys writes: “At the moment the local weather in south-east England is much like that of Champagne within the Seventies.” Optimum latitudes for wine are imagined to be 30 to 50 levels, with Champagne on the northerly finish of the vary. Chilham sits at 51 levels north.
The winery is a half-hour walk through fields from the village, with its cafes, pubs and railway station, the place solely the entrance 4 carriages match subsequent to the quick platform. Bearded butter-yellow cobs of sweetcorn are bursting out of pale inexperienced husks beside the trail. I loop again to Chilham by means of Perry Wood. Simply past the vines, I can see an previous oasthouse by means of branches laden with rosy gala apples. The land was purchased in 2015 from the fruit-growing Gaskain household, whose managing director, Mark Gaskain, oversees day-to-day operations within the vineyards in addition to producing about 70 million apples a yr.
Additional on, an orchard of plums is drooping underneath the load of purple fruit and crates are stacked up prepared for harvest. Within the hedges, sprawling hops and honey-scented wild clematis tangle with reddening rosehips and candy, wine-dark blackberries. Sparrows snack on early-ripened hawthorn underneath arching beech and candy chestnut bushes, historic ivy-wreathed hedge maples and squirrel-haunted hazels. Big clumps of mistletoe grasp from towering poplars.
Cottage gardens are heady with late summer season roses, scented lavender, fragrant catnip. I wander previous wisteria-clad partitions and a row of mud-built home martin nests with late fledglings nonetheless cheeping underneath half-timbered eaves whereas gathering swallows twitter on the wires.
Deputy church warden Lynda Twaite reveals me around the flint-walled St Mary’s, declaring memorials and a battered old-fashioned desk, graffitied by 18th-century youngsters. The pilgrim path to Canterbury runs by means of the lime- and yew-shadowed churchyard. Throughout the sq., I peer by means of the gates at creeper-covered Jacobean Chilham Fort. Its gardens, landscaped by Functionality Brown, now embody a brand new winery.
Earlier than heading to the Woolpack Inn for the evening, I take a night stroll by the River Stour, with a view of weatherboarded Chilham Mill framed by willowherb and ripe elderberries. The river sparkles within the solar and turquoise damselflies hover amongst loosestrife and waterlilies.
The Woolpack’s backyard has a Mediterranean really 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 full of prints and vegetation and quirky lighting. After a multimillion-pound renovation a few years in the past, suites and bedrooms upstairs are named after Kentish vineyards, whereas the large rooms in Rose Cottage, throughout the lane, include their very own personal gardens.
I sit within the leafy shade with a “Woolly cheeseboard” on a slice of tree trunk. As a lot cheese-based set up as meal, its applewood-smoked and creamy goat are artfully organized amongst crackers, olives, nuts, dried fruit, chutneys and tangy selfmade pickles. To go together with it, there are pints of Shepherd Neame’s toffee-appley Grasp Brew from down the highway in Faversham, or glasses of the native cuvée at cellar door costs.
Domaine Evremond helped discovered the Wine Garden of England, a collaboration of Kent vineyards. August 2026 additionally noticed the launch of a new tourism initiative, the Kentish Wine Way, encouraging individuals to go to “England’s largest and most awarded wine area”. The county has 120 commercially energetic vineyards and greater than 25% of Britain’s vines by space, with final yr’s harvest producing greater than 5 million bottles. From the practice window subsequent day, after hours of strolling by means of wooded hills and burdened orchards, a number of vineyards roll previous, glowing within the night daylight.
Lodging was offered by the Woolpack Inn (doubles from £140 B&B) and a few transport by Southeastern (advance tickets from London St Pancras from £16 every means)
5 extra Kent vineyards to go to
Balfour Vineyard
Balfour produced the primary English wine to win a gold medal and a trophy on the International Wine Challenge for its 2004 Brut Rosé. Most days, you possibly can decide up a map on the Cellar Door and wander free across the vineyards, orchards, wildflower meadows and historic oakwoods – or e-book a spread of experiences (from £15pp for a self-tutored tasting). There’s a free shuttle bus to Balfour from Marden practice station Friday to Sunday (45 minutes from London or Canterbury), and car-free visitors get 20% off the year-round excursions and tastings.
Biddenden Vineyards
5 miles from Sissinghurst Castle Garden, the winery at Biddenden is the oldest in Kent. Drinks journalist Henry Jeffreys writes that the Barnes household are “apple growers who moved into grapes in 1969 when Joyce Barnes … heard a section about English viticulture on Radio 4’s Lady’s Hour and determined to plant some vines”. You’ll be able to nonetheless purchase every kind of fancy apple juice and cider right here, in addition to a spread of experiences. Most run from Might to September (from £15 for a self-guided tour and tasting flight) with a brand new behind-the-scenes manufacturing tour and tasting added this yr for the colder months (£30).
Chapel Down
Chapel Down, close to Tenterden, is England’s largest wine producer, with bottles in quite a few supermarkets, made utilizing fruit from greater than 700 acres of vineyards throughout south-east England. A half-hour taxi journey from Ashford Worldwide, it gives numerous excursions and tastings, together with a cheese and wine pairing (£70).
Simpsons’ Wine Property
Ruth and Charles Simpson began making wine in Languedoc in 2002 and, since 2012, in Kent, which they name “one of the vital dynamic wine-producing areas of the world”. Bookable sessions embody tastings (from £25) on a glass-walled mezzanine flooring within the vineyard with velvet sofas and an non-obligatory helter-skelter slide to get again down after sampling their nonetheless and glowing wines.
Westwell
On the sting of the Kent Downs, Westwell is near Charing station and a brief stroll from the Pilgrims’ Method. The winery is understood for its experimental approaches, together with wild yeasts, small-scale manufacturing and cloudy, naturally glowing Pet Nats. Alongside common excursions, there are Friday pizza nights and seasonal supper golf equipment. Tour and tasting £28.