Vineyards

Wow, I am going to be eager to see these responses. Never thought of London as being anywhere near wineries. Learn something every day.

Here you go. The individual websites will tell how easy/difficult it is to visit by public transport. I would travel to the nearest largeish town by train and hire a car from there (rather than London) because there will likely be pretty towns/villages and/or other interesting places to visit nearby eg in Kent and Sussex

http://www.englishwineproducers.co.uk/

Fly to France? Actually, from what I've read, the best English wineries are sparkling wine producers in the south.

This one is 3 miles from where I live in Hampshire, the website does give directions on how to get there but unfortunately the only way is by car, were you thinking of driving whilst you're here?

https://www.hambledonvineyard.co.uk/the-wine-shop/wine-tours

Most of the vineyards are nowhere near rail lines and wine tasting and car driving don't mix. The best option is to stay overnight close to a vineyard. English wines are usually white or sparkling, very dry and quite expensive for what they are as they are not produced in huge numbers. More like a German hock or piesporter.

It's not like the Loire or other French regions whereby there is a vineyard every half mile. Here, they are very spread out and many are very small, so don't have big, fancy visitor centres. My closest in Kent is run from an old timber shed in the farm's garden - you have to knock on the farmhouse door and hope the owners are in!

Some of the bigger producers such as Nyetimber, Hush Heath and Chapel Down in Kent/Sussex do have visitor centres.

If you just want to taste wines rather than visit the vineyard, the following has a wide selection and is located between Brighton and Eastbourne, c 40/50 miles from London. http://englishwine.co.uk. Also nearby here is the more traditionally British cider & perry national collection http://www.middlefarm.com/cider-and-perry.html.

Denbies outside Dorking is about 10 mins walk from Dorking station. Trains go from Victoria or Waterloo.

What a great thread! I didn't realize that there were this many wineries in England! Will look this up next time we go.

Vineyards in southern England are a new phenomenon. They started in the 1970's (?) as a result of Global warming, before that there were none. Wikipedia article here.
But, climate change is not new. Shakespeare records vineyards in England, but the disappeared during the "Little Ice Age" of the 1600's and 1700's; when there were Frost fairs on the Thames when it froze over. Dickens wrote about the Frost Fairs, but he was being nostalgic about his youth, the last one was in 1814.
Europe has a long memory about climate.

I guess if you can have wine production in 49 of the 50 states, you can have wine production in England. But I think I will stick with British beer.