Not another English wine book!

Today I’m checking out the competition in the form of Abbie Moulton’s ‘New British Wine’.

The most deliciously bitchy book reviews are those by another author with a book forthcoming on the same subject. There’s only room for, say, one history of gender-bending in the Eastern Roman empire and it’s very important that the reviewer makes it clear which book is definitive. The vintage example of this is Valerie Grove’s review of Graham Lord’s unauthorised biography of John Mortimer in the Literary Review which was written just before her own official book, A Voyage Round John Mortimer, came out. In the end, however, Lord’s scurrilous work just sounds more fun.

That’s Abbie Moulton and that’s her book

When I was researching my own book, Vines in a Cold Climate (available from some bookshops 3 August) one of the most common refrains I heard was, ‘not another book about English wine!’ There’s Oz Clarke’s English Wine, now on its second edition, Liz Sagues’ A Celebration of English Wine, Ed Dallimore’s admirably thorough The Vineyards of Britain, and multiple books by Mr English Wine himself, Stephen Skelton MW. And while I drove frantically around the country trying to meet as many producers as possible, I was very aware that Ruth Spivey and Abbie Moulton were both working on their own books. 

Now Abbie Moulton’s has just landed on my doorstep and it’s both extremely annoying and in some ways quite reassuring. Annoying because it’s a gorgeous-looking thing full of beautiful photos by Maria Bell and interesting portraits of people in the English and Welsh wine world. But it is reassuringly different to mine in that it focuses on a few producers rather than trying to tell the story of how English wine got to where it is now. The title New British Wine is daring in itself if you know a little about wine. It’s a favourite fact of wine bores that ‘British wine’ refers to something made from imported grape concentrate. The correct term is English and Welsh wine. Normally this is said in the same breath as ‘I had a customer in the shop who said that she didn’t like chardonnay but adored Chablis.’ What larks! So kudos to Moulton for just completely ignoring this because the book is aimed at the general reader and saying ‘English and Welsh’ the whole time is just clumsy when there’s a perfectly good word that encompasses both.

Not a branded gilet in sight

As well as looking at winemakers around the country, she spreads her net wider speaking to sommeliers, bar and restaurant owners and generally people who are enthusiastic about British wine. The idea is to show the scene as much as the producers themselves. As you might expect from a book published by Hoxton Mini Press, the book definitely has a London or London-adjacent slant. Four of the wineries and six of the restaurants are based in London, and the people outside the capital are much more likely to wear a shapeless dress from Toast than a branded gilet. Camel Valley in Cornwall aside, you won’t find any of the larger producers in here.

Though I’m much less interested in sommeliers, restaurateurs etc. than Moulton is, it was great to see so many of my favourite producers included such as Westwell in Kent and Blackbook in London who for my money make some of the best wines in the country and try to price them reasonably too; as well as the fascinating Charlie Herring which grows riesling in a tiny walled garden in Hampshire. I could go through all the quality producers she has missed out but that would be pointless especially as she included two which to my great shame I had never heard of: Dunleavy in Somerset and Trevibban Mill in Cornwall. And he calls himself an English wine expert!

Sadly, since I received my copy P. Franco bar in Hackney has gone under, Forty Hall in Enfield is in serious financial trouble and most shocking of all the blonde bombshell himself Ben Walgate has left Tillingham. But such are the dangers of a book on such a quickly changing industry. At the moment I am frantically adding footnotes to my own book in a bid for it not to be too out of date in August. England, sorry Britain, is currently one of the most exciting places to make wine in the world. Everything is still so new and there’s so much still to be discovered. Moulton’s book captures some of that exhilaration. If you only buy one book on British wine this year…. Oh, hang on!