From the Telegraph
Scotland's first home-grown wine has been described as “undrinkable” by experts.
Christopher Trotter, from Aberdeen, set up his own vineyard in Fife three years ago in a bid to defy the wet Scottish climate.
The chef and food writer installed 200 vines at his home near Upper Largo and the first bottle of Chateau Largo was eagerly awaited by experts.
But he admitted his first vintage tasted "horrible" as he had failed to chill the grapes quickly enough, which allowed oxidisation to occur.
“It’s not great,” he said. “We have produced a vintage of, shall we say, a certain quality, but I’m confident the next will be much better.
“We have proved we can grow grapes in the Scottish climate.”
Well, yes, you can grow grapes, I'm sure. My father manages to grow a vine in the midlands. The problem is that wine relies on grapes maturing, producing sugars, and one of the factors in that is photosynthesis, which means getting sunlight. It's why Champagne is grown where it is - it's not a particularly sweet wine, because it doesn't get the sort of sun that you get down in Burgundy or the Rhone.
"Climate change studies have suggested that areas like Scotland will become more like the Loire Valley in 20 to 30 years," he told the Scottish Daily Mail.
Uh, no. Even with the worst IPCC band, it's 100+ years. If you're betting on climate change making your wine good, think again.
'If you look back to the English wine-making industry 30 years ago, it was the laughing stock of the wine-drinking world. It was not very nice stuff. But they persevered and now they are making some of finest wines in the world.
"Nyetimber (in southern England) now make sparkling wines every bit as good as a £50 bottle of Champagne.
Most of it still isn't very nice stuff. And certainly isn't good value. I've drank some of it. I'd much rather spend the same money on German wine. The main problem is that it just doesn't get enough fruit, so it's pretty thin. I even drank some £30/bottle Nyetimber to see what the fuss was about and was pretty underwhelmed. I'm not even sure it's as good as £30/bottle champagne, let alone what I can get elsewhere.