My Climate Change Garden

This years looks set to be a bumper harvest for English wine producers.The copious late autumn sunshine and a growing season that continues to lengthen means in scenes replicated across all wineries in England, the industry is continuing to harvest its largest ever annual crop of grapes.

Blessed by warm, dry weather during the vital flowering period at the end of June and early July, and September’s “Indian summer”, English winemakers say they have never seen grapes of such quantity and quality.

” In my 22 years in the business, this is the best crop I can remember Nyetimber vineyard manager Paul Woodrow-Hill

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8304304.stm

Growing vines is a wonderful experience – they look beautiful and create a Mediterranean feel to the most english of gardens.Local weather is certainly the largest factor to consider when planting grapes but soil and orientation of the land are also important .http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/impact/vinyards.shtml

Denbies vineyard on the North Downs in Surrey believes climate change is good news for vineyards in the south of England:

‘All in all, with hotter drier summers I think that it could do nothing but benefit us in the vineyard. This is one thing that has been holding us back in the past. We’ve been held back by frosts and obviously long ripening periods because we’ve had to leave the grapes on the vines for that much longer to catch as much sunlight as possible. So if we do increase the ripening period, with more intense sunlight it can do nothing but benefit the quality and quantity of the wine we are producing.’http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/impact/vinyards_denbies.shtml

If you are interested to find out more about English vine-growing, visit some of the vineyards that are putting English wine on the map.http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/uk/travellers-guide-english-vineyards-2363612.html

Wales also has many vineyards which are listed here http://www.english-wine.com/vineyards.html