Record 4m bottles – 6% rise on 2017 – makes it fifth most popular fizz in the UK

British wine drinkers sank a record 4m bottles of English and Welsh sparkling wine last year – up 6% on 2017 and making homegrown fizz more popular than sparkling wines from Australia, the US and Germany combined.

New figures from the Wine and Spirits Trade Association show that while demand for sparkling wine is still growing in the UK, it is being driven primarily by cheaper fizz – notably Italian Prosecco, which remains the bestselling bubbly. British shoppers bought 117m bottles in 2018, compared with fewer than 24m bottles of champagne.

The UK’s third favourite sparkling wine is Spanish, predominantly Cava, with sales of more than 23m bottles, and there were sales of more than 5m bottles from the rest of France (crémant rather than champagne). UK-produced fizz is the fifth most popular.

“Everyone should take the opportunity to toast our talented English winemakers with a glass of homegrown fizz on St George’s Day” said Miles Beale, chief executive of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA). “UK wine trade has come out fighting and proved it can compete with the best of the best at a global level.”

He added: “The government needs to do more to support this emerging British success story”, and urged the chancellor Philip Hammond to “start bringing down his excessively high duty rates after he unfairly singled out wine for a duty rise in his last budget”.

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Wine importers, bottling plants, distributors, retailers and logistics companies across the UK employ about 170,000 people, according to the WSTA, and in 2017 paid almost £4.7bn in duty to the Treasury, more than is paid for any other alcoholic drink.

Despite the WSTA’s complaints about the duty burden, the English wine industry has enjoyed huge growth in recent years, with 3.86m bottles released on to the market in 2017, up 64% on the previous year and nearly three times the 1.34m recorded in 2000.

English winemakers were now looking forward to even bigger sales in the next couple of years, the WSTA said, when wine made from grapes grown in the sweltering summer heatwave of 2018 will arrive on supermarket shelves.

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The fall in sterling has also handed a Brexit bonus to English sparkling wines, with many considered to match premium French champagnes in quality but now priced the same or less.

English sparkling wine is made in the same traditional method as champagne, meaning it is left to age in the bottle, typically for about three years. Sparkling (as opposed to still) wine accounts for 68% of all English and Welsh wine produced and has gained global recognition for its quality.

In a major boost for producers, the Ridgeview estate in Sussex was last November named the world’s best winemaker in the International Wine & Spirit Competition 2018. This was the first time in the competition’s 49-year history that the award has been presented to an English producer.