Vines in a Cold Climate

Henry Jeffreys Press Reviews

Captivating, impeccably researched and endlessly entertaining. Henry Jeffreys embraces his subject like a scholar but with wry humour and a novelist's knack for storytelling. It's the best book on wine I have read. -- Russell Norman

This is my favourite type of book. One that tells a story that you knew was happening but had yet to have the pieces put together by a skilful and engaging writer. -- Stephen Harris, Michelin-starred chef and writer

Jeffreys' entertaining, accessible and skilfully paced book helps us relish the English countryside's delicious new calling. -- Andrew Jefford, wine writer and author of Drinking with the Valkyries

[Jeffreys has] done a great job of highlighting the peculiar Britishness of the whole endeavour, and it's shot through with the wry humour that makes his writing so enjoyable -- Matt Walls, contributing editor Decanter magazine

Jeffreys has written quite a fine book on a subject that's already been covered a great deal to date. He makes it fresh and vibrant through firsthand research and interviews as well as his many years as a drinks writer . . . If he doesn't win some awards (and ideally coin as well) from this book, then the world has gone sideways, yet again. -- Miquel Hudin - Hudin

A fine history of how English wine 'went from joke to world class' in a matter of decades. [...] It's also a masterclass in proper journalism. [...] Witty and erudite. -- Adam Lechmere - Club Oenologique

Until I read this interesting book, I had no idea that the postcode in which I live in northeast Essex is the finest terroir for wine in the country. -- Simon Heffer - Literary Review

Henry Jeffreys, who used to work in the wine trade, is an amiable and entertaining guide to 'the English wine revolution', revelling in the eccentric characters he meets along the way and in some of the arcane goings-on of the wine industry. -- Constance Craig Smith - Daily Mail

Prizewinning food and drink writer Henry Jeffreys has made it his mission to meet the people behind the English wine revolution. It's a fascinating and superbly told adventure which at one stage involved him standing in a converted oasthouse in Sussex with a Tibetan singing bowl on his head. His adventures elsewhere are less dramatic but no less entertaining as he charts how England has become the home of truly world-class wine. - Independent

This unlikely bunch of characters [...] caught up in a kind of grape-fuelled gold rush [...] is what makes Vines in a Cold Climate such a fascinating read. -- Bill Knott - The Oldie

A fascinating and superbly told adventure -- John Clarke It's a good read [...] in a warts-and-all style -- Stephen Skelton - Twitter/X

I read Vines in a Cold Climate quickly, over a few days. I found it rather like a novel you can't put down. That means that it's very well written, not something that can be said of all wine books. -- David Crossley - Wide World of Wine

Henry Jeffreys' entertaining new book, Vines in a Cold Climate, about the revolution that has seen English wine go from 'joke to world class' in 30 years, is perfect for the French wine bore in your life. -- Ed Cumming - Telegraph

entertaining, informative [...] It's both a history . . . and a treasure trove of anecdote, offering lively portraits of the individuals involved -- Richard Hopton - Country & Town House

Jeffreys writes well and perceptively on the personalities who have brought about this transformation. They range from city spivs through wine merchants and alumni of Britain's only wine school, Plumpton College, to former music producers and even a former tabloid journalist. Because it's such a small industry everyone knows, and has often worked for, everyone else and Jeffreys has a knack of eliciting remarkably indiscreet comments. - The Critic

Jeffreys writes with gentle wit and an informal style that neither overplays the bonhomie nor condescends [...] well paced, engaging and packed full of interest. It's also incredibly well researched and balanced. [...] For anyone - Brit or otherwise - who still needs convincing, Vines in a Cold Climate comes highly recommended. -- Simon Woolf - The Morning Claret

Jeffreys has achieved what no other writer on English wine has managed to do. He's written a book that is impossible to put down. It's as much fun as a novel. [...] It's a brilliant read, written with immaculate style and poise, it's funny, witty, spiky, irreverent, sometimes even a little shocking. [...] English wine will never taste the same again. -- Tamlyn Currin - www.jancisrobinson.com

Drinks writer Henry Jeffreys is such a good storyteller - his writing can make me laugh and cry in the space of a thousand words. I can't think of a better person to chronicle English wine's exciting and, at times, eccentric emergence. And Vines in a Cold Climate is a page-turner - brimming with colourful anecdotes and characters amassed by Jeffreys on his travels around some of the country's 900-plus vineyards in his old Mercedes: the secretive billionaire, the record-label boss turned natural winemaker, the indiscreet French investor. You don't even need to know a great deal about wine to enjoy this Bill Bryson-ish book; in many ways it's less of a wine guide and more of a portrait of England and Englishness. -- Alice Lascelles - Financial Times

Jeffreys surveys British winemaking from the Roman era to the present. From small farmers to big business, and from the effects of climate change to those of Brexit, here is English wine's coming-of-age story. [...] Delightful details make the book sing. -- Alice Feiring - TLS

Gosh, what a tour de force! - Jancis Robinson

Mr. Jeffreys, an English drinks writer, has done an excellent job of telling the story of the quirky characters and visionaries behind the first wave of modern English wines in the 1980s and '90s - New York Times

A great tale, brilliantly told. - Daily Express

This is a tremendously gossipy but adroitly helmed examination of where English wine is today and how it got there. Jeffreys is able to bring seamless historical context together with sharp character observations, plenty of opinion and clever use of the vernacular - one chapter is titled 'The Bloody Awful Weather Years'; another is 'Not Going Tits Up'. - Telegraph

A brilliant chronicle of the English wine industry's 'exciting and, at times, eccentric emergence', said Alice Lascelles in the FT. The book brims with colourful characters. - The Week

Rollicking, sometimes entertainingly cheeky, tale of the modern English wine revolution. -- Jancis Robinson - FT Magazine