The finest French fizz? No, this is  bubbly from the Borders!

In the warming spring sunshine beneath the shade of a spreading oak tree, Lorna Jackson walks with a measured pace through neat rows of grapevines.

She checks each flowering root she passes, stopping here and there to examine their tiny green fruits and to snip and prune and tidy. 

At this time of year, the long straight lines of post and wire picking out the gentle contours of this south-facing slope might ordinarily conjure romantic images of rustic French villages or Italian villas.

But the location of this vineyard is altogether more exclusive than those based in such classic wine-growing regions.

For this one has been plonked on an old potato field in the heart of the Roxburghshire countryside.

Some of the crop that will become Borders bubbly

As such, it is currently Scotland’s only outdoor vineyard successfully producing grapes to make wine.

‘People don’t believe me when I say I own a vineyard,’ laughed Mrs Jackson. ‘They have visions of Tuscany – if only! It’s actually next to the site of a former Second World War munitions factory and some grain bins on the other. 

So the vines are stuck between slightly industrial-looking sites.

‘But there’s a big old oak tree at the top of the field and as I’m into the history of the Knights Templar, I just thought it sounded like a nice romantic name to call it Templars Oak Vineyard.’

She added: ‘My husband Trevor’s family has farmed here for 100 years and we had often talked about doing this. 

We both like wine and have travelled a lot to different wine regions, but it was a lovely surprise when he said one day: “If you want to have a go at it, I’ve got this bit of land that I can’t really get the tractor into very easily and I remember potatoes growing in it. 

If it works, then great and if they don’t grow you just plough them back into the earth”.

‘But they grew!’

Admittedly, only around 32lbs of grapes grew on this acre-and-a-half scrap of land, enough for a first vintage of just ten bottles.

Less than a case full, it would scarcely have shaken the foundations of the great champagne houses, but for Templar’s Oak, it felt seismic.

‘We now have our first ten precious bottles of Borders Bubbly – I trademarked the name several years ago. We have made it!’ she said.

‘We are at the second fermentation stage and it should be ready by November. Then we will see if it’s rubbish or any good. It’s fizzing away at the moment.

‘It’s quite dry and clear and we’ve got all the equipment to do all the tests like specific gravity.

‘It looks promising. I think it’s a starter to prove the concept that you can make wine from grapes grown outside in the Scottish hillside.’

The results also suggest that recent claims by French scientists that rising global temperatures could soon see Scotland one day emerge as a rival to Europe’s traditional grape-growing areas was not simply the drink talking.

A global map unveiled last week predicts rising temperatures will make places such as southern France, northern Spain and Italy, as well as the celebrated New World vineyards of southern California and Barossa in Australia too hot to make wine.

At the same time, areas once considered too cool and wet for viticulture, such as Scotland and Northumberland, could be growing this valuable fruit.

Experts from the Bordeaux and Burgundy wine provinces considered two scenarios: one in which warming remains within the two degree limit set by the 2015 Paris climate accord, and another where global temperatures rise by 2C to 4C.

Either way, they forecast Scottish vines will benefit at the expense of their Mediterranean counterparts.

Cornelis van Leeuwen, a professor of viticulture and lead author of the report, said: ‘Climate change is changing the geography of wine – there will be winners and losers. 

You can still make wine almost anywhere, even in tropical climates, but here we looked at quality wine at economically viable yields.’

The notion of the Borders as the new Bordeaux and ‘Scottish wine’ becoming more than a euphemism for a drop of the hard stuff might seem fanciful, but Mrs Jackson, 63, a retired NHS primary care manager, is an enthusiastic pioneer.

‘Whether Templar’s Oak will ever become a huge money-making venture I doubt, but it gives us a lot of pleasure to talk about having a vineyard in Scotland.’

Their adventure began back in 2016 when they ‘just took a chance’ and Mrs Jackson raided her NHS pension pot for the money to buy a thousand vines.

‘We did some research and decided on one called Solaris, a German variety which grows in northern Germany, and Pinot Noir, which is your classic variety for bubbly.

‘Then I went on a course at Plumpton College in East Sussex, the only place in the UK with a week’s intensive “How to build your vineyard” kind of course, which told us we had probably done all the right things.’

Mrs Jackson said favourable weather conditions at their land on Charlesfield Farm, near the village of St Boswells, helped the yield: ‘We are not very high, just 100m up, and we are midway between Eyemouth on the east coast and Gretna and the Solway Firth to the west.

‘We are sheltered by the Cheviots and Carter Bar one way and the Lammermuirs and Soutra the other, so it’s like a little microclimate down here. 

We are a bit like the Loire Valley here and I think the extra daylight Scotland gets in summer helps.

‘We also bought our vines from as far north as we could from a chap in Scarborough, and that’s meant to help, a bit like with roses.’

Her 57-year-old husband, the fourth generation of Jacksons to farm these fields, understood the potato field’s minerality – rocky, and chalky and a bit of clay, offering a suitable ‘terroir’ for wine-growing.

‘Seeing the first little buds was amazing. They’re tiny. They look like a rose stick and then suddenly a couple of vine leaves appear. 

It’s just so romantic, particularly as my husband gave it to me as a present. What could be more romantic than a vineyard as a present?’

Others have been down this road before, most famously chef and food writer Christopher Trotter, who established the Momentum vineyard in Fife in 2010 after hearing about the looming impact of global warming.

Critics described his first vintage, the 2015 Chateau Largo, as ‘horrible’, although later efforts proved more drinkable.

‘Yes, some of them were quite rude initially,’ he laughed, ‘while others were more encouraging.’

When the project ultimately foundered, becoming too costly and time-consuming, he dug up his vines – although hearing news of Mrs Jackson’s success did not surprise him.

‘I was pretty certain it could be done,’ he said, ‘but it needed somebody with a bit more skill, money and time than I had. 

We had a south-facing slope and some of the highest sunshine hours in the whole UK, and it’s proven that it’s now getting too warm in Champagne for good champagne, which is why all the champagne houses are looking northwards.’

Money and time were certainly two factors which constrained Mrs Jackson’s ambitions.

‘I haven’t really kept count of the cost,’ she said. The first vines were £1,000 but we’ve done most of the labouring ourselves, which meant even my mother who was in her Seventies at the time, on her knees, digging.

‘As we’ve had money spare, we’ve bought posts or some wire and it took a long time to get the vines up onto the trellises.

‘When Covid struck, I was a bit busy working in the NHS and we kind of neglected the vines, so things went a bit haywire for a year or two.

‘But it looks like a proper vineyard now.

‘They’re up to about knee height with little white plant guards to protect them from the rabbits. The grapes will flower about Wimbledon fortnight, when you’ll know what you’re going to get.

‘The latest we can harvest would be the first week in October, because it gets wetter and colder after that up here compared to the south of England. It’s a lot of work. 

You have to go down there every day once the season starts just to check how things are and if there are any problems.

‘But, it can also be quite therapeutic to walk among your vines talking to them a little bit and watching them grow. 

It helped me unwind during Covid – and I literally did trample the grapes with my feet. Having hand-picked them all, we felt it was only right.

‘It was a great feeling because we couldn’t believe we actually had enough grapes to make some wine. That was for us the amazing part – and that we’ve done it all by hand. And now we have ten bottles of wine to show for it. It’s an exciting time.’

That goes for UK wine as a whole. There are now 943 vineyards in the UK, almost triple the number 20 years ago, according to a report published in June 2023 by trade body WineGB.

Between 2017 and 2022, England and Wales more than doubled production from 5.3million to 12.2million bottles and WineGB expects it to double again by 2032, yielding a potential 24.7million bottles.

To accommodate this expansion, the wine map is already spreading further west and north – Wales and Yorkshire are now firmly established outposts.

Ian Sargent, Midlands and North regional director for WineGB, is in no doubt parts of Scotland could be next.

Mr Sargent, who with wife Ann planted the Laurel Vines vineyard in the East Riding of Yorkshire in 2011, said: ‘We are definitely seeing this warming coming up the country.

We are looking at the south-east of England being the same temperature as the Champagne region of France was 20 years ago.

‘And in 20 years’ time, it’s going to be the same temperature as Burgundy, while Yorkshire and the north of England could be about the same temperature as Champagne was.

‘This [French] report confirms our data; we are seeing an increase in the sunlight hours per year and increasing temperatures. This is resulting in larger, high-quality vintages.’

The same chalk bed on which the Champagne region of France sits is also present in bands up the UK, which has attracted interest from investors.

Mr Sargent recently gave a presentation to land agents about viticulture and the prospect of turning over estates to vineyards in Cumbria, Northumberland and into Scotland.

He said: ‘The land agents were saying, “Yes, we are getting asked about it”. So there is definitely interest from estates with south-facing slopes that are not too high – all of the pre-requisites to growing grapes.

‘For those prepared to be patient and get the conditions rights, the rewards could be huge.

‘Last year was a bumper crop – we’re looking at 22 million bottles in the UK, but that’s a one-off. The previous best was in 2018 when we hit 14 million bottles.

‘Normally, it’s about ten million bottles. If you look at champagne sold in the UK last year, it was 29 million bottles, but Prosecco was 130 million bottles and I haven’t even touched Cava or any of the other sparkling or still wines. So there is a huge market there.’

For now, Lorna Jackson is delighted with her ten wine bottles. They are destined to be uncorked on a very special occasion – to toast the first birthday of the Jacksons’ first grand-daughter, Maeva, in November.

‘I suspect per bottle, it’s quite an expensively produced wine and I’m sure it would be far cheaper to nip to the shops and buy one,’ she conceded.

‘But where would be the fun in that?’