English sparkling wine has firmly established itself on the world stage, recognised for its quality, consistency and a growing list of accolades. Whilst Traditional Method has led the charge, still wines are following close behind, with a broad range of styles emerging as producers continue to push the category forward.
The wine is world class. The challenge now is awareness and accessibility. Many consumers don't know vineyards exist on their doorsteps, let alone that they can visit them. Closing that gap and building the tourism infrastructure to support our wine industry is one of the biggest opportunities in front of us right now.
English wine tourism: if you build it they will come
With £32.9bn spent on UK domestic tourism last year and 74% of Brits planning a domestic holiday in the nextyear, the opportunity for wine tourism has never been clearer. There are over 1,100 vineyards across England and Wales, many already welcoming visitors, and UK vineyards received 1.5 million visits in 2024. The appetite is there. The infrastructure hasn’t caught up.
Most vineyard visits are planned days or weeks in advance. People try a wine they enjoy, hear about a vineyard from a friend and want to find out more, or come across a recommendation online or in a newspaper and then try to piece together where to go, what's on, how to get there and whether it's even open.
That research stage is a huge opportunity - and one the industry has the chance to get much better at. It’s also the point at which decisions are made: whether someone visits one vineyard, several, or abandons the idea entirely.
The UK wine tourism market is fragmented. While other established wine regions have coordinated digital tourism infrastructure, the UK doesn't yet have a maintained, up to date centralised platform connecting vineyards and visitors.
Information about opening hours, experiences on offer and how to actually reach a vineyard can be difficult to find or out of date. The industry is missing out on significant tourism opportunities – because discovery is still harder than it should be. Even when information is available, it’s rarely presented in a way that helps visitors compare options or plan efficiently.
Despite all the progress in building global credibility, experiencing it first-hand is still far from straightforward.
Attracting visitors
More people are looking to go out and visit the English wine producers they are discovering and enjoy a full wine experience says Ashley Saunders
What people are looking for when they do search has also changed significantly. The way vineyards attracted visitors a decade ago looks nothing like the way they do now, and there's a lot to learn from more established markets such as the US and South Africa as that shift continues.
Travellers increasingly want immersive, experience-led days out rather than a quick tasting. Storytelling sits right at the centre of this: people want to understand not only the process behind how and why a wine is made, but by whom, connecting them to the people and the place behind what's in their glass.
And the industry is genuinely rising to this. Up and down the country, individuals and small teams are creating tasting experiences, food and wine pairings that celebrate local provenance, walking trails through the vines and accommodation that lets you wake up amongst them.
Organised coach trips and group-led tours are making it easier to get there without worrying about who's driving, while encouraging visitors to slow down and spend longer on site.
Getting people to the cellar door remains critical for building relationships and education, and it's where English and Welsh wine has a real opportunity to lean into a stronger sense of place and connection to the land.
Talking loud and clear
Ashley Saunders has developed the UK Vineyard Guide to help tourists find the right English and Welsh wine producers to visit
The gap, though, is that much of this brilliant individual effort is happening without the visibility it deserves. Vineyards are investing heavily in building these experiences, but far less in communicating them. Individual regions are doing great things, but visitors, particularly those coming from outside the UK, don't think in county lines. They need a way to discover and plan across the whole of England and Wales, not region by region across dozens of disconnected sources.
This isn’t accidental. Awareness and emotional connection have to be built deliberately - and they're far more powerful when an industry moves together rather than each vineyard trying to solve this alone.
That's what led me to build UK Vineyard Guide, a national digital platform bringing vineyards together in one place – helping people discover, navigate and plan vineyard visits more easily. It's designed to surface the kind of information people are already searching for and to connect the brilliant, individual work happening across the industry into something visitors can actually navigate.
The next step for UK wine tourism isn't just about continuing to make excellent wine. The next phase of growth for English and Welsh wine won’t come from the bottle alone. It will come from getting people to the vineyard – and making it easy enough for them to get there.
* If you want to find out more about the UK Vineyard Guide then click here.
