Kent's champagne moment: how English wine went from a joke to world-class

Near the village of Chilham in Kent, the Domaine Evremond vineyard is 51% owned by French champagne house Taittinger. The estate opened its visitor centre last year to coincide with the launch of its first wine.

Drinks writer Henry Jeffreys, in his 2023 book, traces how English wine transformed from a joke into a world-class product over 30 years. The vineyard is named after exiled French aristocrat Charles de Saint-Évremond, who introduced champagne to England centuries ago.

Wine critic Jancis Robinson awarded Domaine Evremond's Edition I sparkling wine a "distinguished" 16 out of 20. King Charles III toasted French President Emmanuel Macron with this wine at a state banquet last summer.

Taittinger's vineyard director, Christelle Rinville, regularly oversees the vines, highlighting the qualities of Kent's flinty chalk subsoil. The same company that excavated the Channel Tunnel dug Domaine Evremond's 25-metre-deep cellars, creating the UK's first underground winery, capable of storing 1.5 million bottles.

Visitors can sample wine on the terrace outside the winery's chalk-cliff walls from Wednesday to Sunday. Europe is the world's fastest-warming continent, and the vineyard's unirrigated vines appear to be thriving in the heat — this year's harvest is expected up to three weeks earlier than usual. According to Jeffreys, south-east England's climate now resembles that of Champagne in the 1970s.

Domaine Evremond helped establish the Wine Garden of England collaboration, and August 2026 saw the launch of a new tourism initiative called the Kentish Wine Way. Kent now has 120 commercially active vineyards, accounting for more than a quarter of all vine-growing area in Britain, with last year's harvest yielding more than five million bottles.