Camel Valley's winery and tourist centre at Nanstallon
Increasingly, centralised wineries have emerged in England. Of these, the best known are probably Shawsgate in Suffolk and Owen Elias' Chapel Down winery at Tenterden in Kent. In Berkshire, the most prominent winemaker is Vince Gower at Stanlake Park, near Twyford, who makes wines for nearly 20 vineyards. These are noted for clean reliability.
In West Country are Bob Lindo's Camel Valley at Bodmin, Sharpham in Devon and Three Choirs at Newent in Gloucestershire. The latter is a serious commercial venture, owned by Oldacre Foods and making wines for virtually all the vineyards of the Severn Valley. Here, the speciality is the strongly flavoured Bacchus wines and fruity varietals.

In East Anglia many vineyards concentrate on the Muller Thurgau grape. Contract wine-making is available from Shawsgate and New Hall vineyards.

The usual vineyard clutter as the harvest comes in

The wineries themselves represent a serious investment for the owners. Peter Hall at Breaky Bottom in Sussex built a winery simply because he thought that contract winemakers were ruining his grapes (The subsequent gold medals have proved him right !)

Chemists seem to form a significant group of winemakers. In Kent, former Imperial college lecturer John Gibson (now retired) has had considerable success at Bearsted and the Danilewicz brothers are making Quality wines at Barnsole near Deal . In Avon, Mumfords is also run by Dr. John Cox
What does set apart the English wines from much of the foreign competition is the wide variety of grapes that can be grown. There are no French style restrictions on what can be grown and grapes such as Schonburger, Reichensteiner and Huxelrebe are encouraged. The result is some wines with strong grape flavours that unlike the popular Chardonnay, do not need a large amount of oak to give them some taste. To me, it is the sign of a good wine maker when the natural flavours come through.

In recent years, there has been increased planting of the quality grapes, such as Pinot Noir )several clones suitable for early ripening), Chardonnay and Pinot Gris. Reisling has never been a successful planting, as it invariably fails to ripen.