'A sun trap' British wine flourishes with global heating

We've never had frost here," says Adrian Pike, gesturing across rows of vines just starting to show signs of tiny buds in Kent's weak spring sunshine. Westwell vineyard is on the site of a former monastery and sits close to the Pilgrims' Way, the historical route to Canterbury that runs along the top of the hill behind the vineyard.

- Jane Croft

Pike believes he has been "incredibly lucky" with the terroir: even after heavy winter rain and mud everywhere his fields are "not too bad" due to chalk soil drainage and protection from spring frosts that can fatally freeze grape buds.

"It's to do with the height, it's to do with the trees behind... the Pilgrims' Way," he says. "Frost flows a little bit like water - it doesn't hit land until it's gone past us. The soil here is light and fluffy, full of flint and it's a sun trap." Pike, 52, is among a new breed of entrepreneurs who have invested in English vineyards as the climate heats and vineyards spring up as far north as Yorkshire and Scotland.

The climate crisis led to the UK experiencing its second-hottest year on record last year, with rising temperatures creating increasingly ideal conditions for growing grapes in Britain. But extreme heat also threatens to devastate typical wine regions, such as areas of Spain, Italy and southern California, where harvests are predicted to plummet.

"I don't want to put a positive spin on climate change, because it's not a positive thing," says Pike.

"For every degree it goes up here, the temperature and the weather changes elsewhere. People who are growing in Burgundy are facing things they have never faced before because of the unpredictability of the weather." Pike turned to viticulture after a career in the music industry. Back in the mid-1990s he was living in London and dashing between seven gigs a night on a scooter. He co-founded the record label Moshi Moshi, which released music by bands including Hot Chip and Florence and the Machine, as well as heading the music distributor the state51 Conspiracy.

"There were loads of bands and an explosive scene at the time," he says. "We had Creation [records] on the end of our road and Primal Scream in the pub every weekend. It was a fun time."