'I certainly did my champagne research in the 90s'

We catch up with Blur’s bassist Alex James as he embarks on anew sparkling wine venture and shares the tongue-in-cheek name he's chosen for the brand

- SHELLEY SPADONI

He may be the floppy-haired bassist of one of Britain’s most iconic bands but Blur’s Alex James is refreshingly humble, about both his part in the legendary Britpop four-piece but also his other successful ventures. As well as cheese-making and putting on his own festival, The Big Feastival, he is now dipping his toes into wine production.

When we speak to Alex, 55, from the Cotswolds farm he shares with his wife Claire Neate and their five children, the enthusiasm he has for his latest venture is palpable. And he’s named his range of sparkling wines none other than “Britpop”.

Let’s talk Britpop then – from music to cheese, now wine…

I guess monks would have made music, wine and cheese… That’s what I love about living on my farm – it’s a bit of a hermitage (except when 25,000 people descend on it on the August bank holiday weekend for Feastival). And yeah, who’d have thought English wine would ever be a thing?! It’s an incredible story. We’ve had the great British cheese explosion – having made one kind of cheese after the Second World War, to making more types of cheese now than France.

English wine has an even more incredible story – there was no commercially available English wine available in 1990. In a very short space of time, we’ve gone from amateurs to world champions. It’s a wonderful thing to be a part of.

So was this a natural progression, after conquering the cheese market?

I rolled out a cider at Feastival, which proved really popular – a good place to start.