Kent now hosts a high-profile, Taittinger-backed winery and visitor centre that brings English sparkling into the public eye and into direct tasting rooms. Domaine Evremond, on the rolling slopes outside Chilham, opened its visitor centre last year to coincide with the launch of its first release. The vineyard’s vines, dominated by Pinot Meunier, are 51% owned by the French house and visitors can sample the fizz on site, with tastings available Wednesday to Sunday and year-round tours.
The wine has attracted serious attention. Sales executive Hilary Sharp calls England “now the most exciting wine region.” Drinks writer Henry Jeffreys charted the sector’s rise “from a joke to world-class in 30 years” in his 2023 book Vines in a Cold Climate. Critic Jancis Robinson awarded Domaine Evremond’s Edition I a 16/20, and Jeffreys described the wine’s character as “bright green apple fruit with a reassuring bass note of croissant and Marmite.” The bottle also reached a high-profile table when King Charles III toasted Emmanuel Macron with it at a state banquet.
The site includes 25-metre-deep subterranean cellars, excavated by a company that worked on the Channel Tunnel, where 1.5 million bottles can mature, creating what the estate bills as the UK’s first subterranean winery. Taittinger’s vineyard director, Christelle Rinville, commutes regularly from Champagne and points to the local flinty subsoils as an asset for sparkling production. Pricing at the terrace is explicit: a glass costs £12.50 and a bottle £55.
Climate and geography partly explain the shift. The vineyard sits at about 51 degrees north, and the estate reports that warmer conditions are advancing the season, with harvests running up to three weeks earlier. Jeffreys notes that “Currently the climate in south-east England is similar to that of Champagne in the 1970s,” a comparison that underpins growers’ optimism about producing consistent quality for sparkling wines.
The estate occupies land bought in 2015 from the Gaskain family, whose managing director, Mark Gaskain, continues to run day-to-day operations and remains a major fruit grower, producing roughly 70 million apples a year. Beyond production, Domaine Evremond is positioning itself as a destination: an umbrella-shaded terrace, long rustic tables and wildflower vases frame tastings with views over vines and the Chilham landscape, creating a direct route from bottle to visitor. With a substantial storage capacity, visible royal endorsement and regular public access, the site links international winemaking expertise to local tourism and is likely to keep drawing attention to English sparkling in the coming seasons.
