Growing demand for English ‘bubbly’ has resulted in wine production almost doubling in the past year to four million bottles, with more small wineries getting in on the act. Retired solicitor and farmer Charles Humphreys, 73, owns Hazel End Farm near Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, one of 400 vineyards in England and Wales. About 4,000 bottles of wine are made every year from Charles’s three-acre vineyard plot and he says: ‘The English weather means it is difficult to grow grapes that produce tannins for red wines, but we have good conditions for sparkling white wines. Few people can tell the difference between our sparkling wines and champagne.