On Wed, 25 Jul 2012 Nick Maclaren wrote:

If I remember rightly (and he is sure to correct me if I'm wrong!) from
previous exchanges I've had with him, Nick simply does not like the
kinds of wine that our northern latitude produces, preferring the fuller
flavour of wines grown in warmer climes.

Just a matter of taste.

Yes, precisely, but that wasn't the point I was flamed for making.

That was that grapes don't ripen reliably in the UK, which they
don't. In some places, and with some varieties, they do pretty well,
but they need a favourable location and a suitable variety for the UK
to get even acceptable reliability. And, in bad years, even that
isn't enough!

But what is "reliably"? If we accept that grapes in the UK are never
going to reach the same level of ripeness as in mid and southern France,
then we can use a different measure for judging ripeness.

Most years will produce a good harvest using the varieties developed for
this country. It's interesting that many UK vineyards are now majoring
on producing sparkling wines. The Champagne area of France started doing
this because they were too far north to produce still wines acceptable
to the French public. The UK is now imitating this with a great degree
of success.

I should qualify the above by saying that I'm referring to UK vineyards
in the southern counties and only to white wine.

And, of course, chapitalisation is almost always used, which is a
pretty sure sign of less than optimal ripening

Well, I rarely have to resort to chaptalisation (sic!) - but it's not
unknown. ;-)

We will never produce heavy wines. UK wine will always be lighter with a
rather lower alcohol content. For myself, I'm content with a wine of
around 9% to 10% which I can readily produce most years. But if that's
not enough for the British public then obviously chaptalisation will
take place. but that, in my view, is cheating.

Chaptalisation is allowed in France only to bring the sugar content up
to what one would expect in an average year for that AOC area. Thus it
wouldn't be used all that often. If it happens in the UK do the
wine-makers add the other flavours necessary for a heavier wine? I have
strongly suspected that they do this to UK red wines as the UK cannot
ripen red varieties well enough.

David

--
David Rance writing from Caversham, Reading, UK
http://rance.org.uk