THE Queen has served it to overseas guests at Buckingham Palace banquets, it has won numerous international awards and a Dutch millionaire has just bought the West Sussex vineyard, where it is made.

Eric Heerema says he did not believe that English wine could be so good until he tasted Nyetimber and he plans to increase production sevenfold in six years.

With its fine bubbles, straw colour and faintest hint of Sussex apples, this is a splendid wine to start Christmas festivities, particularly if you choose the special cuvées, such as the Classic Cuvée 1998 just released. But it is not the only sparking wine from the UK to liven up the party.

I have just tasted Cornwall Brut 2004, brought back from the Camel Valley vineyard. Bob Lindo has been tending the vines there for 17 years and has produced an ideal first drink of Christmas Day, slightly lighter and fruitier than Nyetimber.

Britain’s biggest vineyard and the largest producer of English wines are also in on the act with award-winning sparkling wines. Denbies Greenfields Cuvée 2003, from the Dorking, Surrey, vineyard has just won an international gold medal and the Chapel Down Pinot Reserve 2001, from the English Wines Group, with vineyards in Kent and Sussex, is another gold medal winner. Both cost about £20 from the vineyards, online and at selected stores. The Cornwall Brut is slightly cheaper and Nyetimber a little more expensive and available in Waitrose stores.

These wines are so successful and palatable because growers have abandoned the German grapes that were most adaptable to English soils in favour of the three classic champagne grapes, chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier, which grow well in chalky soils and England’s increasingly warm climate.

The Llanerch vineyard, at Hensol, in the Vale of Glamorgan, however, is blending seyval blanc and reichensteiner grapes with a few hardy triomphe grapes to produce Cariad Blush, an off-dry sparkling rosé. It could be so easy to drink on Christmas morning that the rest of the day might become a blur. It is stocked by Sainsbury stores in Wales.

There is no need to abandon English and Welsh wines when you sit down to Christmas lunch. The Sharpham Barrel Fermented Dry 2004, from South Devon, and the Three Choirs Siegerrebe 2004, from Gloucestershire, will hold their own.

The first is made from madeleine angevine grapes and is one of the few English wines to be fermented in new oak barriques, while the siegerrebe is a cross between madeleine and gewürztraminer grapes and produces a fruity and spicy wine.

If you prefer a crisp dry wine with all that rich food, try the Chapel Down Flint Dry or Denbies Flint Valley.

Most enthusiasts of French wine prefer a good red burgundy to accompany the turkey or bordeaux to drink with goose, but even they might be surprised by some of the English reds on offer. The pinot noir grape, the mainstay of burgundies, is used to good effect by Chapel Down. Tasters describe its Pinot Noir 2003 as being “raspberry, cherry, leather and oak on the nose, echoed on the palate with hints of vanilla” and perfectly suited to accompany poultry.

The Tenterden Estate Pinot Noir 2004 is even more sophisticated and, at £25, £10 more expensive. It is matured in new and one-year-old French and American oak barrels and is pale ruby.

The Sharpham Red 2004 is fermented on the skins, which give a deep garnet colour. It has been aged in oak barrels, which contribute to a firm structure underlying vibrant, rich black fruit flavours. These whites and reds are available from the vineyards, in selected stores and on the Best English Wine website. When it comes to the end of the meal, wine buffs look for a classic dessert wine to sip with the Christmas pudding. Finding one produced on our shores is a problem. Chapel Down offers a sweet wine called Nectar and a few companies are following suit but most results are too light.

With a propensity for brandy butter on top of the pudding, I prefer a glass of fine cognac to follow. Surely, you might ask, he is not going to recommend an English brandy? Well, just try Somerset Cider Brandy. Shaun Brownsey and Julian Temperley blend three, five and ten-year-old cider brandies at Kingsbury Episcopi, with the latter described as “complex with a Christmas pudding richness”. It is definitely an after-dinner brandy, 42 per cent alc, and costs £31. The company also produces a 45.8 per cent single cask cider brandy, distilled in 1995, matured in Limousin oak and bottled this October.

If you are snorting with disbelief, you should know that top stores stock these cider brandies — Averys of Bristol, Fortnum & Mason and Harvey Nichols.

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