Biddenden, April 25 - English wines, once the butt of mocking jokes by connoisseurs, enjoyed their best harvest for a decade as global warming created ideal conditions for grapes.
Three million bottles were produced last year, up 50 percent on 2005, and with more farmers diversifying into vineyards, the acreage has risen by a third.
"But there is still a mountain to be climbed," said Julia Tristram Eve of the English Wine Producers marketing association when giving the latest estimates.
"We are still a very small wine-producing country. Imports into Britain of champagne from France total 37 million bottles. Our market share is only one third of one percent. It is tiny."
The outlook for English sparkling wines is particularly good as the Nyetimber Classic Cuvee 1998, produced in the southern English county of Sussex, was last year named the world's best sparkling wine outside the champagne region in the International Wine and Spirit competition.
Across in the neighbouring county of Kent, Julian Barnes is equally upbeat at Biddenden Vineyard, which sells 80 percent of its wines to customers on the spot.
A mild spring and a hot summer produced ideal weather conditions and he said: "Global warming is more of a blessing than a curse."
July and September were record-breaking months in Kent, which is known as the Garden of England. Temperatures were little different from those in Bordeaux, one of France's premier wine-growing regions.
He said producers are more professional nowadays and people pay more attention to "food miles" -- the distance that produce travels to reach the consumer.
And mockery of English wine has faded.
"Most of those jokes probably came from people who didn't know what we have been doing here for 35 years," he told Reuters as he tended the vines in balmy spring sunshine.
"Climate change, farmers' markets, local produce, food miles -- with all that, the industry is in the best state it has ever been in."
Wine has been made in Britain since at least the eighth century with dozens of vineyards listed in the Domesday Book, a land survey and census conducted by William the Conqueror in the 11th century.
Beer and cider, made from widely available hops and apples, were always produced in much greater quantity but vineyards are now very much the flavour of the moment.
Barnes' mother and father first bought their farm back in 1969 and produced their first major crop three years later.
Julian Barnes, 47, has two sons currently at agricultural college and hopes the family can prosper along with the vines. "I would love to see them in here one day," he said.