Britain's heritage-vine heroes

Last year, after reading about Tim Wildman MW’s quest to restore Britain’s viticultural heritage, I set about gathering up all the commercially available UK wines I could find made from hybrid grape varieties and crosses.

It wasn’t easy. Over the last two decades, as vineyard plantings have grown exponentially in the UK, these deeply unfashionable varieties have been grubbed up, abandoned or quietly subsumed as anonymous components of blends. But with the help of Matt Hodgson of Grape Britannia, and WineGB, I collected...