The unlikeliest vineyard in the world

While researching my book I came across a funny story about a lost vineyard on an industrial estate that produced remarkably good wine.

If you’re asked to picture a great vineyard, you might think of the stony terraces of the Douro valley, the chalk hills of Côte des Blancs in Champagne or perhaps the black volcanic soil of Santorini. What you almost certainly aren’t thinking of is a pile of rubble in an industrial estate near Reading. And yet for a few years such unpromising terroir produced not just one of England’s finest wines but one of the best sparkling wines in the world. This is the story of Theale, the most unlikely vineyard in the word.