One of France’s most prestigious champagne brands is hoping to capitalise on Britain’s wine boom after planting its first vines on English soil last week.

Taittinger has chosen a vineyard near the Kent village of Chilham as the site for its venture into English sparkling wine, with the first bottle due to be drunk in 2023.

It is the first time a grande marque champagne house has planted a vineyard in the UK with the aim of producing a top quality English sparkling wine. The wine will be called Domaine Evremond, named after Charles de Saint-Évremond, the French writer who is credited with helping introduce 17th-century London to the habit of quaffing champagne.

The move comes as figures in April revealed that wine producers in the UK will plant a record 1m vines over the next 12 months, allowing growers to produce 2 million more bottles of wine a year in the south of a country not historically known for its viticulture.

Taittinger acquired the Kent farmland, in the heart of the so-called Garden of England, in the autumn of 2015. The vineyard is a joint venture between Taittinger, which has a 55% share, its UK agency and importer Hatch Mansfield, and an army of optimistic and deep-pocketed friends and investors. The project is expected to be a multimillion pound investment over the next 10 years.

Taittinger non-vintage champagne. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Taittinger considered sites in Sussex and Hampshire but chose the Kent location because it met its stringent benchmarks – that the land is no more than 100 metres above sea level, south facing, on chalk and in a sheltered position. The land was bought from the Gaskain family, who are long-established Kent fruit farmers – and investors in the venture – who will continue to grow apples, pears and plums alongside the fledgling vines.

“We were very impressed by the quality of English sparkling wine already produced here,” said Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, the champagne house’s president, who helped plant the vines at a ceremony last week. “We believe the combination of chalk soils, climate and topography of our site in Kent are ideal for producing quality sparkling wine. We are aiming to create a wine with a taste that is something truly exceptional. These attributes are perfect for grape growing, and are very similar to the terroir in Champagne. For us it was a natural step.”

In colour-coded tubs – determining the grape variety – were bundles of spindly, red-wax-topped roots that had crossed the Channel for planting. The first 20 hectares (50 acres) of chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier grapes – the three classic champagne varieties – were planted this week, with plans to plant nearly 40 hectares over the next two to three years. After some ceremonial planting by hand, the thousands of remaining vines were put into the soil by a German-made GPS planting machine.

“Ultimately we will be aiming to produce 300,000 bottles per year of premium English sparkling wine,” said Patrick McGrath, managing director of Hatch Mansfield. “But this will not be for six years or more as the vines will take time to reach the stage where they are producing the quantity of quality fruit required. It will be a gradual process.” The partnership is in line with Taittinger’s joint venture in California’s Napa Valley called Domaine Carneros.

The project will be managed by Taittinger’s long-standing director of viticulture, Vincent Collard, and Stephen Skelton, a leading UK viticulturist, who have already carried out extensive testing of the soil. The winemaking will be overseen by Taittinger in a new purpose-built vineyard, combined with a visitors centre.