British fizz now rivals the French

Never ask Ian Kellett about his spreadsheets. The founder and managing director of Hambledon Vineyard in Hampshire is a former market analyst and before he put a single vine in the ground, he created a spreadsheet. ‘Each page has 150 columns and there are 40 pages. It looks forward 15 years, month by month. You change one number, say the cost of a trellising post, and the whole thing rebuilds itself…’. He would have carried on, if I hadn’t distracted him with a question about grapes.

And you thought that sparkling wine was all about having fun. Well, it is. But never underestimate the extraordinary obsession that goes into creating each and every beautifully poised bottle of bubbles. Making sparkling wine by the traditional method – fermenting it in the bottle, like they do in champagne, rather than pumping it full of bubbles, as they do in prosecco – is a long game. We’re talking three years before you can pick the grapes, another two (at least) before you can release the wine – longer if the wine is very good as the better the wine, the longer it needs to age in bottle.

Then, you have to contend with operating in a marginal climate, where frost at the wrong time, or too much rain, can wipe out an entire year’s income. To be successful you need ambition, a Kellettian level of attention to detail, strategic thinking, and a readiness to think in terms of decades (almost centuries) and across generations when it comes to building a business.