1. Home
2. News

Friday read: London’s wineries offer ‘disruptive’ balance to English Wine Week

Held at the pioneering London Cru in west London, the event brought together the wines and winemakers of Blackbook, Renegade, Vagabond and the host winery, which was also celebrating its 10th birthday.

As Tanguy Martin, business development manager at London Cru’s owner Roberson Wine, explained: “The idea is to show what we can do without owning any vineyards, in London, and English Wine Week was a good excuse to put it all together.”

• Read more: English Wine Week: Sparkling still on top

Among the funkily-labelled and sometimes left-field winemaking styles on show, what impressed most about this cool, urban tasting was the contrast between the wines here and those that are more typically associated with English wine production.

Whereas sparkling wine rules the roost at most English wineries – and certainly in terms of general perception – this tasting was dominated by still wines, and from a broad variety of grape varieties, not to mention a fashionable sprinkling of pet nat, skin contact and otherwise natural-leaning numbers.

“A big difference is that unlike a traditional English producer, where it’s 80% or more sparkling, if you look at the people here, it’s the opposite – 80% still and maybe 20% sparkling,” said Alex Hurley, winemaker at London Cru.

“And that’s because we can shift around to different vineyards for our still wines, to where there is good fruit each year… so that’s a useful top-up to the English wine scene.”

Hurley added that it is the job of urban wineries to “push the boundaries and do something different and disruptive”, with the freedom offered by not owning vineyards being a real plus.

“We definitely need to push for what is possible in England, so you’ll find in the room here that we are doing the opposite to everyone else. We’re making skin contact stuff, some pet nats, someone is even using beer hops in their wine… the stuff that these four wineries do is far more interesting than 100 wineries in the countryside,” added Hurley.

Certainly, the event marked a certain maturity for the wineries involved, but according to Warwick Smith, founder of Renegade Urban Winery, this gathering is still the beginning of what may yet be to come.

“We are still a very nascent industry and we all do quite different things, and a rising tide raises all boats,” he said.

“London Cru was founded in 2013, we came in 2016, Blackbook in 2017 and Vagabond in 2018; basically we all did this before Covid, and the reason things have stopped [developing] is that there is so much uncertainty in the market. I’m guessing now, as things settle down, there will be a bigger move into (urban wineries] again.”

There has, in fact just been another launch, of Leisure Wine on the Old Kent Road, adding to the London winemaking scene.

What changed to allow urban winemaking in a city where, not so long ago, access to grapes meant long journeys from overseas, was a mix of better logistics and the rise and rise of a ready source of grapes much closer to home.

“People have gone through this movement of craft breweries in London, and craft distilleries in London, but until cold-chain logistics, and English grape-growing, you couldn’t make wine in London, but they’ve been doing this for donkey’s years in California,” said Smith.

Sergio Verrillo of Blackbook Winery was also very upbeat about the future of urban wineries across the UK, saying that, “the UK urban winery scene, especially in London, has come on in leaps and bounds, and in terms of where we are going, we’re seeing more and more urban wineries globally, so I’m certain we will see that here”.

“Ultimately what [being an urban winery] means is bringing customers to the forefront, he added, expanding on the appeal.

“We have these wineries outside of vineyard areas, maintaining a separation of land and building, and urban wineries have been historically innovative and experimental. But there’s nothing better than to be able to walk to a local winery, so I think we’ll see more of that, and there are young people coming through the ranks and they are breaking the boundaries of what their parents did with their winemaking background – you see that with natural winemaking and it’s similar with urban wineries.”

Vagabond’s buyer Colin Thorne, who had joined winemaker Jose Quintana at the tasting, brushed aside criticism sometimes levelled that urban wineries are in some way a bit of a gimmick or passing trend, again pointing to that direct and dynamic connection with the wine-drinking public.

“It’s an interesting question, because to a degree you could think ‘well, surely these guys are just taking the leftovers that wineries have left behind’, surfing on their coattails. However, the reality is that the grapes that come in have to be good, and [the wine] is made in a venue where people can see it, so it brings people closer to the actual process. And that’s the reason for any urban winery anywhere in the world – to bring the actual production closer to its audience.”

The tasting, though, was aimed primarily at the trade, acting as a reminder that all but Vagabond also wholesale into on-trade and some indie accounts. For Renegade, for example, this represents around half of its sales, with this side of the business continuing to grow.

And as for any perceived rivalry with the more traditional, vineyard-imbued country winemaking cousins, these urban cellar rats are ultimately magnanimous about the relationship – despite Hurley’s good-humoured jibe.

“There are winemakers of Kent, of Sussex (and the PDO), of Hampshire, so it makes sense to have a London contingency. We are not in direct competition with each, other, we all make very different things,” Verrillo concluded.

A final word went to Quintana at the Vagabond table.

“We do occasionally help each other out and it’s great being in the same room, showing our wines together – it’s that spirit of collaboration that works so well and I’m sure we’ll be doing this again.”

• English wine
• Urban Winery
• london cru
• roberson wine