WineGB’s industry report showed a great resilience amongst English and Welsh wine producers in 2024, despite the straitened economic circumstances. The Great British wine sector is reportedly the fastest growing agricultural sector in the UK. Sales by volume grew by 3% overall, and the amount of wine sold through export has gone from 4% of total sales in 2021 to 9% overall in 2024.
English and Welsh wines are being exported to 45 different countries around the world. The top markets are currently Norway, Japan, the USA, Sweden and Finland. The Norwegian alcohol monopoly, Vinmonopolet, reported a 33% growth in sales of English still and sparkling wines in 2024 – up to 87,318 litres.
Despite these positive statistics, WineGB continues to call on the Government to provide additional support to help British producers grow their sales overseas. No new wine region has ever been able to establish itself successfully in the export market without a good deal of state support. WineGB’s Manifesto for Growth calls for more partnerships with the Department for Business and Trade and the GREAT Britain & Northern Ireland Campaign, the UK’s international communications programme which enhances the UK’s global reputation and drives economic growth.
The industry body has proposed five actions that will “boost the international presence of our industry.”
They are:
- Showcase English and Welsh wine in 20-30 capital and major cities around the world
- Help English and Welsh producers with improved grant funding, export financing, and the organising of physical distribution in conjunction with overseas events
- Improve trade access to our nearest and closest markets in Europe
- Extend the power of gastro-diplomacy across the UK’s network and all public bodies
- Assist exporters with the collation and publication of accurate and up-to-date export data.
WineGB is also taking direct action to help introduce the world to English and Welsh wine. They are working with the Department for Business and Trade to build a plan for promoting the sector overseas. This may be crafted as a three-year or five-year programme of work. There have also been showcases of producers, backed by the Government, at ProWein, Embassy tastings in Stockholm and Copenhagen and participation in Festival Napa Valley.
It is positive to note that Parliament debated English wine production during English Wine Week this year. It was brought by Katie Lam MP, the Conservative Member of Parliament for the Weald of Kent, and covered a wide range of issues, including the extension of small producer relief up to 14% ABV, which was downplayed due to the health agenda, and the possibility of a wine tourism relief, which was not.
Duty, the impact of the Extended Producer Responsibility scheme and energy costs were also up for discussion, as was the possibility of improving the English Protected Designation of Origin and Protected Geographical Indication schemes.
Tristan Osborne, MP for Chatham and Aylesford and the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Wine of Great Britain, had this to say on the subject of support and subsidy for the industry:
“The sector has some unique challenges – not least the climate and the way the Government work. Both parties and both Governments need to do more to support this sector. I welcome the fact that, over the last 14 years, vineries and the wine industry have grown significantly. That is the result of a real focus in that space.
“However, we are up against significant headwinds and risks – not least that our main European competitors have state-based subsidy and sponsorship of their wine industries. In parts of Europe, up to €1 billion is set aside just to support the culture of wine consumption and production. That is not something we do here.”
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs, Daniel Zeichner, also spoke on the subject of export: “I recently had the pleasure of visiting Domaine Evremond and the Simpsons’ Wine Estate, and I was knocked out by them, frankly. They are not just vineyards, but symbols of confidence in the UK’s wine industry. They export half their produce to international markets, with Norway being the top destination. The scale of investment and the ambition are inspiring and yet, exactly as hon. Members have said, we are probably only scratching the surface of what is possible. The opportunity for growth in relation to both domestic and international investment is enormous and absolutely aligns with the Government’s broader mission of boosting economic growth and global trade.”
Indeed, many fine words were exchanged during the debate, and now we wait with bated breath to see what actions arise from them.
Find out more about the GREAT Campaign: www.greatcampaign.com
Read the debate in full on Hansard: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2025-06-25/debates/C368F7D3-7165-4CAD-ACB7-D4C6C832CCB1/EnglishWineProduction
We have to box clever
The WineGB Export Council Chair, Chris Unger, spoke to Vineyard Magazine about the current activations that the industry body is engaged in.
“As a wine producing nation we tick a lot of regional development boxes; inbound tourism, employment and so forth. But we get very little support directly from government for taking the brands into export, so we’ve had to adjust our export strategy based on the fact that there is limited support.
“The support we do get is in market through the Department for Business and Trade or the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) where they can enable us and facilitate market tasting events for producers. We have 15+ producers heading out to Copenhagen and Helsinki in September. Both those events are being hosted in the local embassies. The FCDO will provide us with the embassy space. They’ll help curate the lists of guests and invites.
“Where we have had direct investment, it is very specific to the food and drinks attaches that are operating in markets. We might get an approach from say a country looking to promote drinks from the United Kingdom. There may be Scotch or Welsh whisky and English wine will come up as part of those showcases.
“Generally speaking, they are user paid activations. Any producer who’s going there has to fund part of it. There is a little bit of risk in that because our objective at WineGB is about category-wide activations, but with the user pay approach you’ll often get the same producers going into market. It’s those that have got budget. I don’t want it to become an echo chamber of the same producers taking the limelight. We really want to be able to provide a pathway for new-to-market exporters to be able to come in and present their wines as well. The strength of the category is the diversity of the category.
“This is really where we need further support from government to enable those smaller operators that are making some remarkable wines to come into market. To a certain degree that happens in Norway. There’s such a desire to explore the category that you can sell half a pallet into Norway through the monopoly.
“In the big markets like the US, you really do need significant budget even to get brand recognition. We’re going up against some of the ECC countries where they’ve got budgets that we will never have in the foreseeable future. We have to box clever, we have to be a little bit smarter about how we activate in markets. For example, there are a number of producers who are looking at how they can come together as a collective in the US under the banner of WineGB, but it has to be almost exclusively funded by the producers to make it work.”
Establishing a wine brand takes decades
Vineyard Magazine spoke to Mark Driver, the founder and owner of the Rathfinny Wine Estate in Sussex to find out more about how plans for export have been progressing. Rathfinny is a long-established wine exporter, in relative terms.
In 2013, Decanter quoted you as aspiring to 50% of your production going to export, once the expansion of the winery was complete. How has that progressed?
We’re not quite there yet – currently exports account for approximately 30% of our sales by volume into the trade.
We’re exporting into fourteen different countries around the world and have great distributors in places like Scandinavia, the Netherlands, as well as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and the south east states of America. We’re always keen to hear from others.
What are the current challenges and opportunities around English wine export?
The biggest challenge is category recognition. Whilst English wine gets fantastic coverage in the press in the UK, we get very little press coverage overseas. We’re one of the only English wines imported into South Korea, when we visited last year we didn’t see another English sparkling wine in the market. English sparkling does well in Norway, but less so in Sweden.
In overseas markets like Japan, individual wine brands like Rathfinny are forging a market for English sparkling wines. Collectively, the English wine industry has a pathetically low budget compared to other wine regions to establish markets for English wines. UK Government grants are restricted to helping with flights and attending wine fairs. What we really need is a large marketing budget like Wines of Australia have in Europe if we are to stand any chance of building overseas markets for English wines.
What has the feedback been from foreign buyers?
They love the wines; the purity of fruit, the delicate bubbles and appreciate the long lees aging, however, our buyers are trying to convince customers to buy an English sparkling wine rather than a bottle of Champagne. Establishing a wine brand takes decades. It requires a coordinated marketing effort with a substantial budget, which as an industry we don’t have.
Do you think the industry is being supported adequately when it comes to export?
No – We get kind words from Government, but we’re not seen as important. The whole agricultural sector has been ignored by the current government. We need someone in power who grasps that English wine could become an industry of national importance.
In France, the wine industry is considered to be of critical importance. It employs over half a million people, generates significant tax revenue and is the country’s second-most important export after aeronautical engineering.
The English wine industry already employs several thousand people in the rural economy. We generate significant tax revenue. As exports continue to grow and imports are substituted for domestically produced wines, we’re helping address our balance of payments deficit with the rest of the wine making world.
We need someone in government to realise that our nascent wine industry is of critical importance and deserves greater support to develop markets overseas for our amazing wines, and promote wine tourism. After all, wine tourists spend more money than normal tourists and will take the knowledge of the brands home with them.
Targeted and strategic approach
One of the biggest exporters by percentage is Hattingley Valley Wine in Hampshire. Hattingley Valley Wine is currently making around 35% of revenue from export, in contrast to the industry average of 8%-9%. Hattingley Valley sell wine into 18 countries, and are the largest English sparkling wine exporter to Norway through the Norwegian monopoly. Chris Unger, Sales and Marketing Director, exchanged his WineGB hat for the Hattingley one and gave Vineyard magazine a little more detail.
Which markets are you selling into right now?
From a sparkling wine perspective, we are very strong in Norway. We’ve got all of our core range listed within the monopoly now, which is really a dream scenario. And all three of those core wines are performing in growth. We’ve just picked up a tender for our Blanc de Blancs which we’re launching in November. That’s what they call a category two listing – selling across 250 stores – so that’s a big one for us.
The next biggest for us is the US, despite all of the headwinds with the macroeconomic environment, and it is my focused growth market. We see a lot of opportunity there despite all the turbulence. We’ve been in the US since 2017 and it has been very much up and down, but there is latent interest in the category.
A lot of people have heard about English sparkling wines but they haven’t necessarily tasted them or had access to them. We need a targeted and strategic approach of having strong importer and distributor relationships to build up a groundswell but it is a long term project. It’s not just going to be like flicking a switch and we’re suddenly going to be selling a million bottles. It’s that kind of old school boots-on-the-ground approach. Get wine into people’s glasses, share the narrative, share the story. That takes a long time and it’s expensive but it is often the most effective way of starting the momentum behind the category that we need.
How do you manage the business of exporting?
At Hattingley we run a really lean ship. I’m directly responsible for exports. That would make up probably 30% of my time and I’m out of the country for about 40 days a year. For example, throughout September I’ll be in Denmark, Finland, Austria twice across four different cities, Norway and then I’ll be in Switzerland. But they’re not big trips and they’re very much in collaboration with importer-distributors to maximise it.
For the bigger trips out to the US usually I’ll have to go out for two weeks to make it worthwhile. They are a combination of traditional knocking on doors, trade work, pre-arranged dinners and similar events. They are planned six months in advance just because they are expensive and they need to really have a significant ROI.
What is the key to export success for Hattingley?
We’re quite lucky that we’ve had relatively long term relationships with our partners. In Norway we’ve been with our importer for seven years. And we’ve been working with the same person who changed from one importer to another for longer than that. In Japan, we’ve been with the same importer since 2016.
We need a partner who understands us as a brand and our approach to going into the market. Because it doesn’t matter how much time you spend out there – if you don’t have that effective route to market, you’re pushing water uphill. For any new exporter, the fundamental step is to make sure that you’re going to have someone who’s going to genuinely represent your brand as an extension of you as a team.
We want them to be part of our family. We want them to completely understand the brand and our approach to how we want the wines taken to market because we rely on them so heavily for doing a lot of that heavy lifting.
