English wine is no longer a joke. High summer is the time to savour and sup delicate, floral, verdant, hedgerow-scented English wine, whose best bottles gloriously echo the bosky notes of the season. A run of fine recent vintages with the stand-alone heatwave 2003, and 2004 vintages, followed by the good 2006, 2005 and 2002 crops, has helped England's vignerons' cause.

Long-standing readers will know that I am not English wine's biggest fan, yet, even I came over all patriotic at the recent kerfuffle in another newspaper's correspondence column claiming that English wine is a joke and that English fizz in particular cannot be compared with "even the cheapest supermarket own-label champagne". Bunkum.

While it is true that very few English wines are good value for money, and that most of the better English bubbles are over-priced at around £20 a bottle, I can think of at least five English sparkling wine producers making wines that are as good as the cheaper non-vintage wines from lesser champagne houses, and way better than the current crop of cheap supermarket champagne.

The all-important new trend emerging from the adolescent English wine industry, around l00 wineries and 350 vineyards to date, has been the growth of tasty, English, méthode champenoise sparklers made from the same grapes grown in Champagne: chardonnay and pinot noir and meunier. About a third of our 1,000 hectares of vines are planted to these varieties, but production as yet is much less. England's cool northern climate, just like the Champagne region's, and southern England's chalky soils in particular, produce the sort of skinny, aromatic, high-acid wines that are naturally suited to sparkling wine production.

I do not believe, though, that global warming will suddenly turn southern England into a Champagnesque paradise. To date, there is just one experimental, one-hectare plot of Hampshire vines planted that are part owned by a French small champagne grower, and the first crop will not be picked until next year.

In the meantime, if you want to crack open some of the best and best value summery bottles from England's green and pleasant land, try the lively, fresh, floral 2006 Three Choirs Aromatic White (£5.49, Tesco, from next month), or the sweet, spritzy strawberry spice of Chapel Down's 2006 English Rosé, complete with a five per cent dollop of pinot noir (£8.99, Waitrose). Chapel Down's dryer, yeastier, bacchus grape-led, elderflower-scented non-vintage Flint Dry is another consistently good buy (£6.99, Waitrose).

Finally, if you want to see what all the sparkling wine fuss is about, crack open the 2004 Ridgeview Merret (£18.99, Waitrose), whose clean, appley, nutty, lemony palate is summer in a glass.

jane.macquitty@thetimes.co.uk

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