Bordeaux? Tuscany? No, Kent

When the history of recent English wine-growing comes to be written, it will make colourful reading. Fools, heroes, egomaniacs, wrinklies and wide boys will all enjoy starring roles; the dramas of repeated financial collapse, public opprobrium, rural chicanery and the malevolence of the elements will lend it a soap-opera allure. By and large, the actors in this early, Wild-West phase have all given up, been declared bankrupt or been laid gently to rest in home-county churchyards. In narrative terms, things are about to become much duller. In terms of wine quality, we're just beginning.

Yes, I know that this summer has been chilly and dismal, the poor little vines are still struggling to get their flowers set, and without a fierce, leonine August we'll be harvesting in the dredging gloom of November. Kent and Sussex are not yet the Loire valley, and they'll never be Australia. You can, though, ripen wine grapes here in most vintages; you can taste England in wine form. It's pure, poplar-slender and hedgerow-scented, a white wine of vivid, light-footed intensity which makes lovely summer drinking. No one else in the wine world can do that. We belong. And now, at last, we're beginning to do it professionally.

Three of the biggest names in English winegrowing down the years have been Lamberhurst, Tenterden and Carr-Taylor. As from this July, they're one. They've come together under the Chapel Down umbrella (the new King-Kong company is called English Wine plc), giving Chapel Down around 95 acres of vineyard of its own, and a further 180 under contract. I was amazed to see what the Australians call a "tank farm" in the middle of the Kentish countryside last week - enough gleaming stainless steel to give Chapel Down the ability to produce a million bottles a year. Its wines are in Waitrose, Safeway, Tesco, Sainsbury, Unwins; it is on its third British Airways contract, and its wines are being served in Virgin Upper Class. You can buy them in Paris, Boston and Hamburg.

Chapel Down's two biggest suppliers, Chris Nicholas of Sandhurst in Kent and Piers Greenwood of New Hall in Essex, are planting new vineyards. Both are primarily farmers who understand about fruit growing; they deliver top-quality raw materials every year to Chapel Down winemaker Owen Elias and wine director Carl Koenen. No more retirement hobbying; no more Good Life fantasies; no more pony-paddock posing. This is specialised agriculture, and it can pay.

Owen, it's true, does have a bit of a past, though he's such a quiet, sleepy-looking cove that you have to work hard to excavate it. A Chelsea Art College graduate, he discovered the Bhundu Boys and signed them for his own record label DiscAfrique, before becoming disillusioned with the music business and retiring to restore his parent's Cumbrian farmhouse. Marriage meant an income requirement, so he trained as a vine-grower and winemaker at Plumpton Agricultural College, then joined Chapel Down to work with its winemaker David Cowderoy. He took over when David left, assisted by Andy Hollis, an ex-Oddbins staff member who has had winemaking experience at Cloudy Bay in New Zealand, and Hugh Girling, another Plumpton graduate who has worked at Montana in New Zealand. Owen himself has made wine in Argentina.

The plan is to carry on making Chapel Down wines as multi-regional blends (blending is one of the keys to making consistent English wines), while developing Tenterden, Lamber-hurst and Carr-Taylor as single-estate wines using their own vineyard sources with - who knows? - the stamp of their own terroir. That's a few years away yet. I tasted through the Chapel Down range last week, and picked out four widely available wines which I'd be happy to uncork at any time; the British Airways Horizon blend is also very good. If you're one of those who, like The Daily Telegraph editorialists, wish to confine English wine to Room 101, taste again.

The Best of British

Chapel Down Summerhill Dry (non-vintage)
Clean, faintly musky scents and a refreshing grape-and-grapefruit flavour; fine value quaffing (Unwins, Majestic £3.99, Waitrose £4.29 16/25).

1998 Chapel Down Flint Dry
Leafy, Sauvignon-Blanc-like scents and flavours, with a complex, well-structured, food-friendly style in this blend of Bacchus and lees-aged Reichensteiner and M¸ller-Thurgau (Waitrose £4.99, 17/25).

1999 Chapel Down Bacchus
Bacchus, for me, is England's finest still-wine grape variety, since it's usually ripe, soft and full of enticing fruits - tangerine, grape and Cox's apple here (Tesco, Majestic £4.99, 18/25).

Chapel Down Epoch Brut (non-vintage)
Many English sparkling wines are ambitious but expensive; this one combines sound value with crisp, well-balanced, russet-apple flavours (Tesco, Safeway £6.99, 16/25).