What counts as fruit wine in the UK?
Fruit wine is wine made from fruit other than grapes. In Britain it is often called country wine or made wine.
Two terms get confused:
- English wine (or Welsh wine) is made from grapes grown in England (or Wales).
- British wine is a drink made in Britain from fermented grape or other fruit juice or concentrate that can come from anywhere in the world.
Our raspberry wine is neither of these. It is a fruit wine made from raspberries grown here in the UK, with added sugar before fermentation.
From Romans to country wines
The Romans introduced winemaking to Britain. Mead, cider and perry followed as the climate cooled.
Households fermented what they grew or foraged: elderflower, elderberry, damson, sloe. Country wines preserved a glut. We draw on the millennia old tradition of making the best of seasonal produce before the fruit dies.
Why grape wine faded
An 1860 cut in duty on imported wine undercut English growers, and tastes moved to sweet fortified wines and spirits. The First World War then diverted land to food and rationed sugar. Fruit winemaking survived at home, with secret boozy moonshine hidden in back rooms.
The post-war home-winemaking boom
Sugar rationing ended in 1953 and home winemaking took off. C. J. J. Berry co-founded one of Britain’s first winemakers’ circles in Andover, then published First Steps in Winemaking (1960), with country wine recipes. By 1961 there were more than 100 wine circles.
The 1970s fruit wine surge: home winemaking, perry and Babycham
The 1970s were the peak of the home winemaking boom. Wine was still an expensive treat, so households made their own from elderberries, blackberries and garden fruit, using Berry’s recipes and the first wine kits. The craze faded once cheap supermarket wine arrived.
If you’d like an accurate to life description of how people felt about fruit wine in the 1970s, you can find it in the 70’s BBC sitcom the Good Life, where Tom & Barbara Good produce a pea-pod Burgundy from the waste produce from their garden harvest.
We’re producing this vintage in the same ethos – making the best of ingredients, but with the knowledge (and yeast) grown by UK wine producing over the last 70 odd years.
Fizz went mainstream too, as perry. Babycham, a light, 6% sparkling perry from Somerset, launched nationally in 1953 and in 1957 became the first alcoholic drink advertised on British TV.
Sold as “genuine champagne perry”, it was hugely popular through the 1960s and 1970s, and perry pears were planted across the west of England to supply it. Champagne makers sued over the “champagne perry” wording in 1978 and lost.
What is a pét-nat?
Pét-nat is short for pétillant naturel, “naturally sparkling”. It uses the ancestral method (méthode ancestrale), one of the oldest ways of making sparkling wine.
The wine is bottled before the first fermentation finishes, and it completes in the bottle, where it carbonates from excess CO2 as a byproduct of the ferment.
There is no dosage, usually no disgorging, and often a crown cap. Many pét-nats sit around 10% ABV. Ours is around 12%.
Why raspberries, and why champagne yeast?
Raspberries bring aroma, acidity and colour. Champagne yeast ferments cleanly and copes with higher alcohol and bottle pressure, which suits a 12% bottle-finished wine.
We already use French Mousseaux bottles for our liqueurs, which are designed to work with pressure. Essential here with a bottle carbonated liquid.
The result is a modern take on Britain’s oldest habit: a low lying delicious raspberry funk, eminently quaffable, with live yeast and sediment.
You’ll likely taste balanced sweetness, but each bottle will entirely depend on the yeast and what it decided to do with the remaining sugar.
UK Raspberry pét-nat: what to expect:
- Style: pét-nat raspberry wine (ancestral method)
- Fruit: UK-grown raspberries
- Champagne yeast
- Strength: 12% ABV
- Status: fermenting and being bottled now (autumn 2026)
- Release: 2027, or when its ready
Serve cold, we expect, but we’ll update you when it launches.
Frequently asked questions
Is fruit wine popular in the UK? No, not at all. Home winemaking made country wines a household tradition after the 1950s, and vineyards are now bringing UK grape wine to a wider audience. But there are only 79 (now 80) producers of fruit wine in the UK compared to 1,100 grape focussed vineyards.
What is the difference between British fruit wine and English wine? English wine is made from grapes grown in England. British fruit wine (or made wine) is made in Britain from juice or concentrate that can originate anywhere in the world. There is no AOC or DOC for what we’re making here, but you can rest assured our labels will contain the full story and ingredients.
What is pét-nat fruit wine? It is a lightly sparkling wine made with the ancestral method, using fruit rather than grapes, with its fermentation finishing in the bottle.
Why might pét-nat look cloudy? Pét-nat is often left on its lees (the yeast sediment) rather than disgorged, which can give a gentle haze.
When will it be released? We are bottling now, then ageing for as long as it takes with early release planned for late 2027.
You’ll find out about this first in the Keep. Our members only domain. You’ll have to vault the portcullis to get there, or possibly fight the Balrog.
Be first to taste it
Join the kingdom and find out when our handmade raspberry pét-nat is released in 2027.