Boris tries a drop of English... and yea, it is good!

Boris Johnson, in today's Telegraph, asks why don't we start a new 'Buy British' campaign.

The last one, he reports, started by five secretaries from Surbiton in 1968, ended in farce when it was discovered that the 'I'm Backing Britain' T-shirts had been made in Portugal – and other howlers.

Boris: "filled with a sense of mission"

It seems the Mayor of London had been inspired by spotting a bottle of English wine in his local supermarket. He evidently found something comical about it, likening the idea of English Wine to madrigals, Morris Dancing and brass rubbings.

I was surprised at his surprise, frankly, but to give the man his due, he decided to buy it, as an act of support for a British business... "I would be supporting a British firm, helping its cash flow in a tough time; and as my fingers fastened around the neck of the bottle I was filled with a sense of mission..."

It all sounds a bit tongue-in-cheek, that's the man's style after all, but the last line of the piece, which argues for us all to buy British when we can, is pleasing.

"The wine was terrific, by the way."

Now all we need to know is which one he took home from that shopping trip.

No Nyetimber vintage this year – rained off

Is this a good time to be launching a new website about English Wine?
We're talking about the rain. There's been no shortage of it this year. It's splashing the pavement gloriously outside even as we write this.
 
The horrible summer has meant that wine production has dropped by more than a third in some parts of the country.

Nyetimber: the award-winning vineyard has made "a hard decision"

And one of England's most successful sparkling wine vineyards scrapped its harvest completely in order to sustain the "quality" of its brand.
So has the fizz been taken out of the English wine industry?
Wine has been produced in England since the Roman occupation, but for much of the 20th Century winemaking was seen as a hobby industry.
However, following a series of international competition wins, where English sparkling wines beat others from around the world - including some from the Champagne region in France - interest has surged.
One of these award winners, Nyetimber, based in West Chiltington, Sussex (above) took the decision not to harvest its grapes this year.
"It was a hard decision - a wine maker gets about 30 chances in their lifetime to make a vintage," said Christian Holthausen, from Nyetimber.
"I'm only aware of a couple other vineyards in the world that have ever done this."