The summer wash-out won't drown English wine Those who are picking have been vigorous in their defence of quality. "Surprisingly ripe and the juice so far is excellent," says Bob Lindo of Camel Valley, who posted a short video clip on Twitter showing fat, healthy bunches on a sorting belt, along with the stirring comment, "You tell me quality or not." But across the board, yields are so low - typically 30 to 50 per cent below average - that there is certain to be a shortage of English sparkling wine in about 2015 or 2016, when bottles from this vintage come on stream. To put this in context, it's not just the English who have had it tough. Vignerons across swathes of mainland Europe have had a lot to contend with in 2012. In some places the weather has been so extraordinary that it's been compared to the seven plagues of Egypt - without the locusts. It's been challenging in Burgundy. Rioja has endured drought conditions and a scorching August. And in Champagne, as in England, the harvest is much reduced, with some reporting a crop 75 per cent down on last year's. Knowing the champenois, this will prove a great excuse to ratchet up prices in the near future. It's an occupational hazard of this business that the best wine grapes are grown in marginal climates, exacerbating the risk. Simon Robinson is a lawyer who owns a large arable farm in Hampshire, part of which he planted up with vineyards to establish Hattingley Valley Wines in 2008. "Arable growers drop their jaws at the value per acre we get out of a vineyard," he said this week as we stood in a muddy field, looking at rows of pinot noir with tiny berries and such thin bunches that I thought at first they had already been picked. But you have to put in a lot more work. It's expensive - it requires dedicated machinery that you can't really use for anything else - and it needs a lot of skill. It's also higher risk. It's not just the grapes that have struggled. The arable harvest is the worst it's ever been. The difference is that in a bad year of farming you lose maybe 20 per cent of the crop. In a bad year of vineyards you can lose it all. What made things so difficult in Britain this year was the awful weather we had in June. It's a critical time for determining the size and quality of the crop because that is when the vines flower. "For flowering, you need three conditions," says Dermot Sugrue, a former Nyetimber winemaker who is now at Wiston Estate. Heat, calm and dry. This year it was cold, with high wind and horizontal rain. Instead of taking a few days, flowering went on for ages, resulting in millerandange - where you get different-sized berries on the same bunch. It's sometimes known as "hen and chicken." The further east you go, into Kent, the better vineyards seem to have fared. Those in enclosed or sheltered spots were also protected, as were those where flowering came later, in the better weather of early July. Unfortunately, unlike last year, we haven't had the benefit of a balmy autumn. The fruit on those late-flowering vines has yet to ripen. Some growers expect to be picking into November - "If the rain stops and we can get some sunshine," says Emma Rice at Hattingley. And if we avoid a frost, which would kill it. She is watching the forecasts anxiously. Absorbing the impact of a vintage like this is harder for a fledgling than a developed wine industry. A saving grace in Champagne is that the cellars are filled with bottles from previous vintages that can be released when necessary. They also have tanks of "reserve wine" for blending into non-vintage fizz, spreading the deficits of a lean year. It's frustrating that this should have come just now, when English sparkling wine, which has improved immeasurably in the past decade, has begun to be taken seriously across the wine world. The new sense of confidence and excitement has been almost tangible. The last thing anyone wants is a retreat, or to disrupt hard-won contracts with a supply problem. Julia Trustram Eve, the impressive and understated one-woman force behind English Wine Producers, points out that the fruit coming through from the many new plantings of pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonnay will help to reduce the impact of this shortfall. Vines take a while to get into their stride; you have to wait three summers to pick the first fruit, and yields gradually increase after that. She intends to press on with plans to send bottles of English sparkling wine around the world. For the first time, we'll be taking a stand at Prowein, the international wine fair, in Düsseldorf next spring. I already have several producers signed up and hope more will come, too. Not long ago the prospect of export markets would have sounded ridiculous for a product more commonly found in farm shops. But newer concerns, such as Hambledon in Hampshire, who have yet to release a wine, have already been schmoozing Chinese buyers. And the intention of Nyetimber's smart recent label design was to make it look attractive on foreign shelves. This year is a setback. It is also, perhaps, a reminder that the English wine industry is still finding its way. We have only recently worked out that sparkling wine made from champagne varieties, in a blend most commonly based on chardonnay, is England's best asset. Mike Roberts at Ridgeview in East Sussex, one of the founding fathers of modern English wine, also believes that the future lies in smaller parcels, despite a number of set-ups that have planted great tracts of land with new vines. "In this extreme climate, which isn't easy to grow in, there are few economies of scale," he says. I like to see smaller, 20-acre vineyards that can be carefully watched. At Ridgeview we have spread the geographical distribution over 11 sites, each with its own microclimate, so there's a mixture of risk. Ah, yes, the R word again. Risk. "With wine, you have to have a decade-long view on it," says Christian Seely. Otherwise you'd go nuts. There will be a bad year from time to time. If you're unable to think like that, you shouldn't plant grapes for wine. It might be a write-off vintage for some local growers. But this is no reason to write off English wine.