The Wine and
Spirit Trade Association has launched a new interactive map
showing some of Britain’s best distillery and vineyard
destinations to help ‘staycationers’ learn more about the art of
wine and spirit making.
Last month the Royal Household launched a
premium small-batch London dry gin. The spirit is infused with 12
botanicals, several of which are from Buckingham Palace garden,
including lemon verbena, hawthorn berries, bay leaves and
mulberry leaves.
The Buckingham Palace Gin follows the debut in 2016 of the
Queen’s first English sparkling wine, grown on Windsor Great
Park, which went on sale to mark the Queen’s 90th
birthday and sold out almost immediately.
The WSTA’s digital map has been designed to
celebrate the best of homegrown British wine and spirits by
recommending UK vineyards and distilleries which offer tours,
tastings and places to eat and stay on site.
It includes over 50 stop offs, across the country, where
our talented wine makers and distillers are opening their doors
to the public sharing the behind the scenes secrets of their
craft.
Miles Beale, Chief Executive of the Wine and Spirit
Trade Association said:
“The UK’s growing wine and spirit industries are a real
success story, but don’t just take our word for it, even Her
Majesty the Queen is offering her royal seal of approval to these
great British drinks.
The ginaissance has led to a huge wave of investment in
exciting new distillery visitor centres and tours. There are now
more English vineyards offering tours, tastings and dining
experiences than ever before. To celebrate our great British
distillers and wine makers we have launched the UK’s first
digital wine and spirit map.
The pandemic means that more people are choosing to enjoy a
staycation over the summer and this August Bank Holiday weekend.
The WSTA’s interactive map has been designed to encourage people
to find out more about the wave of exciting new wine and spirit
experiences on their doorsteps.”
A click on the grape icon will take you to an information
page on a UK vineyard including their website where details of
tours and much more can be found. Click on the spirit bottle for
information on distilleries and websites detailing a variety of
tours and gin making experiences on offer.
A visit to a vineyard will help visitors understand why
English sparkling wine is now rivalling Champagne to such an
extent that Taittinger and Pommery Champagne houses
have invested in vineyards in the south of England.
Britain now boasts over 763 vineyards, over 260 of which
were established in the last 5 years, leading to the planting of
over 3 million vines across UK slopes.
Following the combined harvest of 2018 and 2019 Britain
produced the equivalent of over 23 million bottles of still and
sparkling wine – compared to less than 10 million bottles over
the 2015 and 2016 harvests.
Thanks to the gin boom the UK now boasts over 440
distilleries, including 80 new distilleries last
year alone. There are now more than double the
number of distilleries operating across the country than there
were five years ago.
But it’s not just gin tempting a growing number of visitors
to the distillery tours, in the last couple of years there has
been rapid growth in the number of distillers making English and
Welsh whisky.
The “ginnaisance” attracted a whole new audience of people
keen to try new spirit experiences meaning investors have been
more willing to invest in craft distilleries allowing an English
and Welsh whisky market to emerge after lying dormant for more
than a century.
