(Decanter) - Jane Anson goes beyond the recent cache of international awards to see what's been happening on the English Pinot Noir scene, and whether Burgundy should be worried.

I’ve been conducting field tests into English global warming patterns for the past few decades, so I can tell you definitively that I’m the least surprised person to hear the country’s red wines are finally winning awards in international competitions.

Are we really saying that just as Champagne producers have stopped smirking at the idea of English sparkling wine, now the Burgundians are going to have to follow suit?

Okay so the field studies, dating back to the late 1990s, involve bank holiday weekends at various campsites around the UK. I’m remembering numerous sodden nights in Wales, Dorset, Norfolk, North Yorkshire, Derbyshire, the New Forest and others that I seem to have blocked from my memory banks.

It’s been at least five years since the entire weekend has been spent fearlessly trying to spark a flame for cooking under torrential rain, and this year, in Sussex, the first time that packing nothing lighter than jeans and jumpers was a serious blunder.

All the same, you don’t need to be Marco Pierre White to be just a little sceptical about future prospects for the recent crop of award-winning Pinots. Are we really saying that just as Champagne producers have stopped smirking at the idea of English sparkling wine, now the Burgundians are going to have to follow suit?