The Sommly Blog
Dispatches from the UK wine scene.
The number that caught my eye was buried in the middle of Defined Wine's 2025 vintage report, published on June 1st: for the first time, still wine production at a leading UK contract winery is matching, and in some categories beating, sparkling. Not nudging closer. Actually rivalling it.
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The last time French vignerons were picking Chardonnay in late July, some UK buyers were caught completely off guard. That was 2003. According to Wine-Searcher, May 30, 2026, meteorologists and growers across France are now pointing at a repeat, with heat accumulation across Burgundy, the Loire, and parts of the Rhône already running well ahead of seasonal norms.
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A Master of Wine looked at Essex last week and said, essentially, you're all sleeping on this. The Guardian ran it on May 24th. Crouch Valley, a stretch of land most people associate with commuter towns and flat horizons, got singled out as one of the most promising spots for English still wine right now.
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Somewhere in the Weald right now, a vineyard manager is walking rows of vines and doing the maths on how bad this actually is.
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The number that stopped me mid-scroll on Wednesday was 23. That's how many gold medals English wines took home from the International Wine Challenge 2026, reported by The Guardian on May 20, a higher percentage of golds per entry than any other country in the competition.
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The first detailed notes on the 2025 Bordeaux vintage started landing in mid-May, and the language being used is not the cautious, hedging kind. Berry Bros. & Rudd and Cult Wines both published early reports around May 13, and the word "spectacular" has been doing the rounds since. That kind of adjective gets thrown at maybe one vintage in five or six years, so it's worth paying attention.
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Alexandra Price spent years telling other people which wines to drink. Now she's opened a room where you can make up your own mind.
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Forty-odd producers hauling wine samples up from the slopes of an active volcano to a London tasting room is either dedication or mild madness. Possibly both.
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April 30th. Lady of the Grapes announced a second site, this one in Borough Market, bigger than the original Covent Garden spot that's been quietly doing something most London wine bars don't bother with: stocking almost exclusively wine made by women.
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Forty quid for a bottle of Assyrtiko from a producer nobody's heard of is a hard sell. That's the problem Greek wine has always had in this country, and it's not really about the wine.
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Somewhere between a Beaujolais and a skin-contact white, a glass of something genuinely difficult to categorise is being poured in natural wine bars across the UK right now.
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