Medieval England had its native wines. It is generally accepted, for example, that the city of Winchester takes its name from the Latin word Vintonia, "the city of the vine". Moreover, the Venerable Bede has written about vineyards in the eighth century, and there are many references in the Domesday Book and in other later documents to wine production in the south of England.
Early in the 12th century, for example, the historian William of Malmesbury recorded of his native Gloucestershire that "no county in England has so many or so good vineyards as this for either fertility or sweetness of the grape; the wine has in it no unpleasant tartness or eagerness and is little inferior to the French in sweetness."
And even as late as 1321 it is recorded that the Bishop of Rochester sent Edward II "a present of his drinks, withall both wine and grapes of his own growth from his vineyards at Halling."
But in the year 1771 a major controversy about these issues arose in the Antiquarian Society in London, the honourable members party to the "Vineyard Controversy" being divided as to whether all this were plausible or not. Chief among the sceptics was the Hon Daines Barrington, who did not believe a word of it.
The English grapes, he told the society, were currants. The vineyards of the Domesday Book were nothing more than ordinary gardens, and the climate of England would never permit the ripening of grapes for wine. And since he was speaking in the middle of the Little Ice Age, an exceptionally cold period in English history, you could see how he might come to this conclusion.
Historical climatologists, however, have resolved this mystery. It is now known that in the early centuries AD, the climate of these islands was not significantly different from that we know today, but the average temperature gradually rose through the Dark and Middle Ages, so that by the time of the Norman Conquest it was perhaps a degree and a half above the present values and the weather generally was more benign.
Inhabitants of the southern parts of England at around that time would have enjoyed conditions unusually congenial for these islands, making viticulture viable.
Some historians maintain, however, that it was not the immediate effect of climate change that caused the move away from wine, but the arrival of what might be thought of as the precursor of the European Union.
After the Norman Conquest superior French wines, produced more cheaply, could be imported across the Channel without difficulty, and the English reverted to producing corn and mutton and to brewing their not unpalatable local beer.