About the Book
***A New York Times pick for best wine book of 2023!***
'A tour de force!' - Jancis Robinson
'Henry Jeffreys, who used to work in the wine trade, is an amiable and entertaining guide to 'the English wine revolution'' - Daily Mail
'A fascinating and superbly told adventure' - Independent
'A tremendously gossipy but adroitly helmed examination of where English wine istoday and how it got there' - Telegraph
'An invaluable guide' - Evening Standard
'Delightful details make the book sing' - Times Literary Supplement
'A page-turner' - Financial Times
'Mr. Jeffreys, an English drinks writer, has done an excellent job of telling the story of the quirky characters and visionaries behind the first wave of modern English wines in the 1980s and '90s' - New York Times
The definitive story of the extraordinary and surprising success of English wine - and the people who transformed our reputation on the global stage from that of a joke to world-class in 30 years.
From an amateur affair made by retirees to a multi-million-pound industry with quality to rival Champagne, the rise of English wine has been one of the more unexpected wine stories of the past 30 years. In this illuminating and accessible account, award-winning drinks writer Henry Jeffreys takes you behind the scenes of the English wine revolution. It's a story about changing climate and technology but most of all it's about men and women with vision, determination and more than a little bloody-mindedness. From secretive billionaires to the single mother farming a couple of hectares in Kent, these are the people making wine in a cold climate.
Table of Contents:
i: Introduction 1: False starts 2: The bloody awful weather years 3: Ambition and money 4: Bubbling under 5: Not going tits up 6: Money men 7: Foreign affairs 8: Fizz wars 9: Big wine 10: Small wine 11: Organic growth 12: Grape expectations 13: Eastern promise 14: Urban wineries 15: Tourist attractions 16: Reaching the customer 17: Storm clouds ahead 18: Warming up 19: Good for England ii: Glossary iii: Bibliography iv: Acknowledgements v: Index
About the Author :
Henry Jeffreys studied English and Classical Literature at Leeds University. He worked in the wine trade and publishing before becoming a freelance writer and broadcaster. He was wine critic for The Lady, and his work has appeared in Spectator magazine, the Guardian, the Oldie and BBC Good Food magazine. He has been on BBC Radio 4, Radio 5 and Monocle Radio, and featured on BBC 2's Inside the Factory (2020). He was a judge for the BBC Radio 4's Food & Farming Awards and for the Fortnum ">Mason food and drink awards 2018. He is the author of Fortnum & Mason award-winning Empire of Booze: British History through the Bottom of a Glass (2017), The Home Bar (2018) and The Cocktail Dictionary (2020), and in 2022 was awarded Fortnum & Mason drink writer of the year. He is currently features editor for the Master of Malt drinks blog and drink writer for The Critic Magazine. He lives in Faversham, Kent with his wife and two children.
Review :
Captivating, impeccably researched and endlessly entertaining. Henry Jeffreys embraces his subject like a scholar but with wry humour and a novelist's knack for storytelling. It's the best book on wine I have read.
I can't recommend it [enough]... it's a brilliant story, wonderfully told, I'm enjoying it the second time more than the first and that's the sign of a really good book.
This is my favourite type of book. One that tells a story that you knew was happening but had yet to have the pieces put together by a skilful and engaging writer.
Jeffreys' entertaining, accessible and skilfully paced book helps us relish the English countryside's delicious new calling.
[Jeffreys has] done a great job of highlighting the peculiar Britishness of the whole endeavour, and it's shot through with the wry humour that makes his writing so enjoyable
Jeffreys has written quite a fine book on a subject that's already been covered a great deal to date. He makes it fresh and vibrant through firsthand research and interviews as well as his many years as a drinks writer . . . If he doesn't win some awards (and ideally coin as well) from this book, then the world has gone sideways, yet again.
A fine history of how English wine 'went from joke to world class' in a matter of decades. [...] It's also a masterclass in proper journalism. [...] Witty and erudite.
Until I read this interesting book, I had no idea that the postcode in which I live in northeast Essex is the finest
terroir for wine in the country.
Henry Jeffreys, who used to work in the wine trade, is an amiable and entertaining guide to 'the English wine revolution', revelling in the eccentric characters he meets along the way and in some of the arcane goings-on of the wine industry.
Prizewinning food and drink writer Henry Jeffreys has made it his mission to meet the people behind the English wine revolution. It's a fascinating and superbly told adventure which at one stage involved him standing in a converted oasthouse in Sussex with a Tibetan singing bowl on his head. His adventures elsewhere are less dramatic but no less entertaining as he charts how England has become the home of truly world-class wine.
This unlikely bunch of characters [...] caught up in a kind of grape-fuelled gold rush [...] is what makes Vines in a Cold Climate such a fascinating read.
A fascinating and superbly told adventure
It's a good read [...] in a warts-and-all style
I read Vines in a Cold Climate quickly, over a few days. I found it rather like a novel you can't put down. That means that it's very well written, not something that can be said of all wine books.
Henry Jeffreys' entertaining new book, Vines in a Cold Climate, about the revolution that has seen English wine go from 'joke to world class' in 30 years, is perfect for the French wine bore in your life.
entertaining, informative [...] It's both a history . . . and a treasure trove of anecdote, offering lively portraits of the individuals involved
Jeffreys writes well and perceptively on the personalities who have brought about this transformation. They range from city spivs through wine merchants and alumni of Britain's only wine school, Plumpton College, to former music producers and even a former tabloid journalist. Because it's such a small industry everyone knows, and has often worked for, everyone else and Jeffreys has a knack of eliciting remarkably indiscreet comments.
Jeffreys writes with gentle wit and an informal style that neither overplays the bonhomie nor condescends [...] well paced, engaging and packed full of interest. It's also incredibly well researched and balanced. [...] For anyone - Brit or otherwise - who still needs convincing, Vines in a Cold Climate comes highly recommended.
Jeffreys has achieved what no other writer on English wine has managed to do. He's written a book that is impossible to put down. It's as much fun as a novel. [...] It's a brilliant read, written with immaculate style and poise, it's funny, witty, spiky, irreverent, sometimes even a little shocking. [...] English wine will never taste the same again.
Drinks writer Henry Jeffreys is such a good storyteller - his writing can make me laugh and cry in the space of a thousand words. I can't think of a better person to chronicle English wine's exciting and, at times, eccentric emergence. And Vines in a Cold Climate is a page-turner - brimming with colourful anecdotes and characters amassed by Jeffreys on his travels around some of the country's 900-plus vineyards in his old Mercedes: the secretive billionaire, the record-label boss turned natural winemaker, the indiscreet French investor. You don't even need to know a great deal about wine to enjoy this Bill Bryson-ish book; in many ways it's less of a wine guide and more of a portrait of England and Englishness.
Jeffreys surveys British winemaking from the Roman era to the present. From small farmers to big business, and from the effects of climate change to those of Brexit, here is English wine's coming-of-age story. [...] Delightful details make the book sing.
Gosh, what a tour de force!
Mr. Jeffreys, an English drinks writer, has done an excellent job of telling the story of the quirky characters and visionaries behind the first wave of modern English wines in the 1980s and '90s
A great tale, brilliantly told.
This is a tremendously gossipy but adroitly helmed examination of where English wine is today and how it got there. Jeffreys is able to bring seamless historical context together with sharp character observations, plenty of opinion and clever use of the vernacular - one chapter is titled 'The Bloody Awful Weather Years'; another is 'Not Going Tits Up'.
A brilliant chronicle of the English wine industry's 'exciting and, at times, eccentric emergence', said Alice Lascelles in the FT. The book brims with colourful characters.
Rollicking, sometimes entertainingly cheeky, tale of the modern English wine revolution.
