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It has for a while been a "niche" market and the target of wicked jokes. But the English wine industry is on the edge of a major discovery on account of striking "perfect growth conditions" across the season, which is probably going to make a vintage year. English fizzy wines particularly have been the largest success story, producers and shops say, enjoying record sales as their appeal has grown on the back of the recession.Waitrose the biggest retailer of English wines, with a fifty five % slice of the market last week reported a 163% year-on-year increase in sales of hereabouts stocked English champagnes and a 97% increase in sales of nationally produced wine. It has additionally seen a fifty percent increase in sales of still wines.

Some of the previous are now top class, continually scoring above top champagnes in blind tastings, and certain to be top sellers for Yuletide. At Denbies in Surrey the biggest single estate vineyard in England cropping of its three hundred thousand vines was finished at the end of October. The grapes have been pushed and are now fermenting in big tanks, in preparation for bottling. Still wines will be bottled next year while champagnes will be bottled in four or 5 years time. Chris White, general executive of Denbies related: "This is an amazingly exciting time. 20 to thirty years back folks had no wish to drink English wine as it was seen as rubbish and that was extremely tricky to sell.

Now our largest problem is making enough of it." Denbies ' vineyards are on the North Downs just outside Dorking - on land that has the same soil-chalk structure as the Champers area of northerly France. White declared the warming climate and a critical mass of expertise had all helped the industry drive up standards and improve quality.

This year's good spring and warm, dry late summer and early autumn means the best wine produced in the United Kingdom is probably going to be arriving on superstore shelves and dining tables next year Overall production is still small compared to other states. UK production is at present around 2m bottles, varying seriously dependent on the vintage conditions, but less than 0.05% of the amount produced in France (6.9bn bottles). The acclamation for English wine in addition has soared on the back of green concerns, White explains: “Folk are drinking it because they're nervous about the carbon emissions footprint.

It's also lower in alcohol than plenty of other wines usually with an ABV [alcohol by volume] of 11.5%. And English champagnes are a high quality, reasonable alternative option to champagne." Its Surrey Gold brand is now the top selling English still wine.

Denbies supplies wines direct to the House of Commons dining rooms and to govt departments, and hopes its products will help to trumpet the very best of UK in the catering contracts for the Olympics in 2012. Ken Mackay, wine purchaser with Waitrose, announced: "English wines are not a joke. The 160% increase in the sales of domestically stocked cava is unusual. There's still a controversy around price, as it can't be produced that cheaply, but the quality hasn't ever been better." The retailer's policy is to offer wines in-store from local vineyards as part of its local produce drive.

This year the company also took the strange step of planting five hectares (12.5 acres) of champers grapes on its two thousand hectare farm in Hampshire. Julia Trustram Eve of the English Wine Producers trade body, declared: "we aren't calling 2009 a fender year vis volume, nevertheless it will be a vintage year vis quality; 2007 and 2008 were a wash-out re the weather." Sue Daniels, wine consultant at MS, which stocks a small range of English wines, announced: "I was visiting Chapel Down winery [part of the English Wines Group] only a few weeks back tasting the standard of the fermenting wines, which were all looking to be fantastic. The winery was happy with the near perfect, vintage conditions. ".