Yorkshire vineyards embrace merlot as climate changes

Vineyards in Yorkshire are experimenting with the growing of grapes typically found in southern Europe as summers become hotter and longer.

Wineries in the region are set for a record-breaking harvest following a dry and warm growing season, after they produced more than 140,000 bottles in 2025.

This year, Wine GB anticipates Yorkshire's producers will surpass that figure, with vineyards looking at ways of growing new varieties as the climate shifts.

About 100 vines of merlot have been planted at Yorkshire Heart near York, where owner Tim Spakouskas says: "If it does well, we'll plant more of it, and hopefully rely on the summer that we're getting to help produce a really good quality merlot wine."

Merlot is the main grape grown in the French wine regions of Right Bank, near Bordeaux.

Italy, California, Australia, South Africa and Chile also produce merlot.

"This year we're hoping for our biggest and best harvest," says Tim, after helping to load crates full of grapes onto a conveyor belt at the family-run vineyard in Nun Monkton.

"It's been a really good growing year. The hot, dry weather has been great for the vines."

Solaris is the main variety of grape that growers in the north of England produce, partly because of its resilience to frost.

Recent rain at the end of the dry spell has even "plumped up" the fruit ready for harvesting.

Figures for June, July and August show that the average mean temperature - which includes day and overnight temperatures - was 16.5C, the warmest on record in a dataset going back to 1884, according to the Met Office.

"These established vines here, they've got a big root system that goes down and the taproot goes down. They're bringing plenty of moisture up from the ground so they've not suffered with the dry weather," Tim adds.

In Rawdon, an elevated village to the west of Leeds, Knotfield Vines co-owner Sophie Ellis says "every day counts".

She started growing more than 3,000 vines in 2022, alongside her best-friend Laura Tillotson. They are one of 21 commercial vineyards in the Yorkshire region, with that number rising all the time.

"The wine we end up with in two years' time, after this harvest, is a complete expression of the growing season. The weather, the soil, the biodiversity, everything feeds into it."

They started their vineyard after reading about the booming wine-making industry on Instagram.

The pair went into it "with optimism and a huge dollop of naivety", adding: "Every bit of it has been surprising, hard, joyous. Each stage of the journey has taught us a lot. What an ace thing it is to do."

Wine in Yorkshire has grown a reputation for quality, with producers becoming experienced in creating award-winning tipples.

In 2022, 101,000 bottles of wine were produced in the reghion, according to Wine GB. By 2025, that had risen to 142,000.

"Wines are winning silvers and golds at competitions, international competitions," says Ian Sargent, regional director at Wine GB and a grower at Laurel Vines near Driffield in East Yorkshire.

"Your high-end restaurants are actually looking at the wines, looking at English wines, Welsh wines, but now we're looking at Yorkshire wines which is fantastic again.

"If I'd have said that five years ago that wouldn't have been the case, but just the quality stands out."

Vineyards across northern England have grown in size as well as number over the past 10 years as they also look at planting different varieties.

"These are pinot noir," adds Tim in Nun Monkton, pointing to some red grapes still waiting to be harvested. His vineyard has significantly expanded since it began as a "hobby" more than 25 years ago.

"We also planted some merlot...only 100 vines. We put them in as a trial. They're growing, they're doing very well, but then next year we'll see whether we get some fruit off them and whether we can ripen the fruit in the summer we get.

"I think back in the day when we first planted pinot noir, my parents did that because people said 'you can't grow pinot noir in Yorkshire', and they went 'of course we can'."

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