It's the drink talking

England's wines fail to live up to the grandiose claims often made about them, says Malcolm Gluck
There's something in the air. It isn't pollen, because no relief is possible. It's insane English optimism.

Tim Henman started it by getting to the last four of the French Open. England's footballers are exclaiming their chances of winning Euro 2004. And then there are English wine-growers who, patriotically (according to the findings of a Which? Magazine survey), now turn out sparkling products superior to those from Champagne.

Is it all hype? Well, Henman could triumph at Roland Garros, and England might win Euro 2004 - but for our wine-growers to get excited about the results of a Which? Taste test is, to put it mildly, daft.

The history of English wine is not something I am an expert on, because its products are largely mediocre and uninteresting, even though the history of vines in England and Wales dates back to Roman times.

British wine-growing's modern rebirth has been credited to Guy Salisbury-Jones who, when he was a captain in the British army in Flanders during the first world war, acquired a love of wine and, along with it, a desire to have his own vineyard one day.

When he retired after the second world war, he realised his dream, planting a vineyard in the field outside his home in the village of Hambledon, Hampshire.

By 1954, the vines - of the seyval blanc variety - had flourished sufficiently to produce their first wine-worthy crop and, for the first time since 1875, there was an English vineyard growing wines for commercial sale. It was from that success that the current English wine industry came.

It is a cottage industry, dominated by a few big players and, until recently, not helped by a moist climate. Over the past decade, however, English summers have dramatically lengthened and become warmer. For the first time, we have something approaching a continental climate for English vineyards.

The proportion of the huge national thirst for wine satisfied by English growers is, however, tiny. English wine is sold from the vineyards themselves or, when it is stocked by a supermarket, usually only in branches in its county of production.

Wisely, many producers have seen themselves as part of the local tourist industry, opening tasting rooms and restaurants. Who does not like to buy a bottle of wine from the place where it was made?

The four largest vineyard operations in England, growing grapes on a commercial basis and selling into local branches of national supermarkets and some wine chains are Denbies (Dorking, Surrey), New Hall (Chelmsford, Essex), Three Choirs (Newent, Gloucestershire) and English Wines (which involves Tenterden, Chapel Down and Lamberhurst vineyards in Kent). Together, these ambitious producers farm hundreds of acres of vines.

As for the rest of the UK producers, eight out of ten sell their wines directly from the vineyard. They simply don't grow the grape varieties that could fashion more commercial wines, and many wine-growers are amateurish.

None of this would matter if the stuff was made for untrumpeted personal consumption by the producer and his or her friends, but there is an absurdly chauvinistic tone to much of piffle talked by English wine producers. It only serves to make them, as a marketing entity, foolish and madly utopian.

Nick Brown, Labour's then secretary of state for agriculture, got in on the act in 1999 when he suggested that, if the French continued to ban British beef, English wine provided a "very suitable" alternative to its French counterpart. It's akin to someone saying that a park football match would be a suitable alternative to watching Liverpool versus Arsenal.

I have long argued that the only English wine worth anything would be made from concentrated, rotten grapes - thus creating a honeyed style of some complexity which could be paired with our native blue cheeses.

This could be offered to tourists in restaurants and hotels, and would quickly establish a sensible and exciting basis for a sound commercial future. But, of course, we want to pretend we make wine just as the French do. We don't - but who said the French were the arbiters of taste where wine is concerned anyway?

Many wine drinkers in this country prefer new world styles, and it is this we should consider when making comparisons.

Indeed, with the Which? magazine sparkling wine taste test, I would have included not only examples of bubbly from California, Australia, Argentina, South Africa and New Zealand, but also Spain (Cava) and Italy (Prosecco), as well as sparkling wines from Alsace, the Loire and Burgundy.

I can only comment on two of the English sparkling wines recently tasted. Both were from West Sussex, and both got 10 points out of 20. They were Ridgeview Cuvee Merret Bloomsbury 1999 (a very sour-faced wine) and Nyetimber Classic Cuvee Brut 1996 (which I found raw and dispiriting). The latter was judged to be the best in the Which? test.

I'd rather spend £4.99 on a bottle of decent Cava than £19 on the Nyetimber. There's no accounting for taste? On yes there is. With the £15 I've saved, I account myself a shrewder drinker altogether.

· Malcolm Gluck writes the Super Plonk column in Guardian Weekend

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