Matt Gregory The Ancestral White 2022

English wine has improved so dramatically over the last fifteen years it’s become difficult to keep making polite jokes about it. Producers like Matt Gregory are part of that newer wave. Smaller-scale, thoughtful and much more focused on site and farming than simply proving England can ripen grapes at all.

Working in the south of England, Gregory focuses on low-intervention wines often built around varieties suited to cooler climates and chalky soils. Bacchus, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay all make sense here, bringing freshness, citrus, orchard fruit and bright acidity naturally rather than through cellar correction.

The wines themselves tend to feel energetic and lightly textured, often carrying that faint saline edge good English wine can develop. There’s usually a slightly wild quality too, though more “alive and expressive” than unstable. Minimal intervention without unnecessary chaos attached.

English wine generally benefits enormously from climate change, though everybody understandably feels slightly awkward celebrating that too enthusiastically. Longer growing seasons and better vineyard management have transformed quality, especially for sparkling and fresher still wines.

What works nicely with producers like Matt Gregory is that the wines still feel experimental in a healthy way. Curious, evolving and rooted in place rather than copied directly from France or elsewhere.