English winemakers prosper but veg farms wilt in the drought

Walking between the vines in Sandy Luck’s Aldwick Estate vineyard, just south of Bristol, you could be in Southern France, not North Somerset. The sun is out, again, and the grapes are plump and plentiful.

“We’re getting nice ”veraison’ here, look at that,” she says, showing me a bunch where some of the young green fruit are turning purple, tinged with grey.

“We’re ahead of the game this year.”

Winemakers love this summer. The long hot dry days have helped ripen the fruit and “keep disease at bay”, as Luck puts it. There is a subtle shift too.

More sun means more sugar in the grapes, which will mean higher alcohol content.

This allows English winemakers to produce still red wines, where traditionally the cool climate had limited them to drier sparkling varieties.

A hot dry summer in 2025 meant Aldwick produced some “very good looking still reds” from the Pinot Noir grapes, instead of using them for fizz.

“It makes a more rounded wine,” Luck explained. “The quality is higher, and we have more variety we can make,” she explained.