Celebrate English Wine At Three Choirs Vineyard In Gloucester

We might be more famous for our beer industry but English wine is on the rise. Not only do we make pretty decent wine these days, our bubbly is starting to rival the French stuff.

It's so good, there's no better time to start drinking domestic.

The Space: It's not just the most southern parts of England that are getting in on the act. Vineyards are popping up all over the country, as far north as Yorkshire.

The second biggest wine producer in the country is Three Choirs in Gloucestershire. So I headed to the West Midlands to find out more about how it's transformed a former fruit farm into a high yielding vineyard.

You can stay in one of a row of cute rooms overlooking the vines, allowing guests to stay on site and explore the vineyard and surrounding countryside at their leisure. The main building become a swish restaurant and behind the scenes there’s a working winery that presses grapes, creates blends, brews sparkling (and non) wine and bottles the lot.

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The Vibe: Three Choirs is what happens when people who love wine and food run a vineyard.

It’s a gorgeous boutique-y getaway into the Cotswolds that’s perfect for foodies, wine lovers and townies that just need to see some green.

Plus it's quite they novelty to stay at an English vineyard and sit overlooking the vines, supping on its very own wines. It makes you fall a bit more in love with this fertile land, especially if the sun is shining.

Three Choirs runs two tours each day around the vines and the winery, that helps guests to get a feel for the place, and understand how it’s managed to get wine to take off in the colder climes of the UK. We find out the vines and methods used to produce it and get a nice selection of tasters.

The damage: Vineyard-view rooms including breakfast start at £135

The brag: "Sipping English sparkling wine from my balcony overlooking the vines @3Choirs vineyard #bliss"

The Instagram shot:

The hits:

Well, the wine of course. Winemaker Martin Fowke has been awarded UK Winemaker of the Year twice and the sparkling wine is absolutely delicious. There are also some lovely dry whites and a medium for those with sweeter tastes.

And the food is stupendous. In particular, the peanut butter parfait pudding with popping candy crumb I had for dessert. I’m not even a ‘sweet’ person and I wanted to kiss the chef.

The menu as a whole is seasonal and local, and showcases fine British cooking. Stand-outs were the lamb rack and the hors d’oeuvres that included duck pate and delicious ham hock.

It's designed to go well with the English wine made on site, or there’s a selection of foreign wines available too. As we were having red meat we opted for a French red that was absolutely perfect, and as we’d sampled plenty of English bubbly earlier in the day, it was nice to have that option.

The wine tour is definitely worth heading on as it really makes you realise that you’re staying at a working winery even though everyone speaks English and you haven’t had to get on a ferry.

We were taken round by Bart, who seems to have done every job in the place, including bottling sparkling wine, with hilarious consequences (ask him about the experience). So he’s very well versed and told us all about how they created the vines’ ecosystem and where the different varieties come from. And, let us into the secret of how they cork a sparkling wine bottle.

After the tour, there are several walks around the vineyard that take in the local scenery, ponds and of course the vines. It may be tempting to sit on your balcony guzzling vino but these are definitely worthwhile and even the long walk doesn’t take much time.

Also on a fairly unrelated note, there’s a the brilliant International Centre For Bird of Prey a few minutes drive away and it’s definitely worth a visit.

The Misses: From accommodation to the wine itself, Three Choirs does what it does very well. The only downside I could find was that the red wine still isn’t able to match its continental and new world competitors. It’s perfectly drinkable but if you’re a big red fan you may want to opt for the aforementioned foreign menu.

However, as the menu itself says, with global warming hotting up, who knows how good our English reds could be in a few years (not that we should probably be thinking like that!).

The deets: Vineyard view rooms from £135 and luxury lodges from £160