IT'S that time of the year when we, hopefully, surf on a foaming wave of fizz. So with perfect timing Taittinger has become the first champagne house to buy land across the channel. They will replant a 69 hectare former apple orchard near Canterbury, in Kent, with chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier and aim to one day produce 300,000 bottles of English sparkling wine.

It has been a perennial story for years, the sight of Frenchmen on the South Downs prospecting for vineyards as global warming causes concerns in Champagne. They always returned empty handed, a detail glossed over by excited reports, but this time it’s different.

You can see the attraction with vineyard land averaging £10,000 an acre in southern England compared to £350,000 in Champagne, but then the words ‘sparkling wine’ don’t have quite the same cachet. When asked if English fizz would ever rival the best from France, Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, the company president, ducked the question. “When things are good we don’t talk about nationality. Mozart is Mozart. Alec Guinness is Alec Guinness. Brigitte Bardot is Brigitte Bardot.”

Yet virtually all bottle-fermented sparkling wine from Tasmania to Tunbridge Wells is made in champagne’s image using the same grapes and production process. The quality is often right up there and perhaps better is some cases. What is missing is the magic ‘c’ word, and all the history and marketing behind it.

Champagne brands are made less in the vineyard and cellar, than in the ad agency whose lavish campaigns come wrapped in PR and celebrity endorsement. Louis Roederer’s Cristal, around £150 a pop, was originally created for Tsar Alexander II in 1876. Eventually it moved from royalty to the rap king Jay-Z until he dumped the brand for his own champagne – the outrageously bling Ace of Spades.

Back in England, with vineyard plantings doubling since 2007, last year’s production hit 6.3 million bottles, two thirds of it sparkling. Extrapolate that forward and English fizz will have over a third of the market above £20 within five years if it can hold its price.

But given the pressure from below with Aldi’s £10.99 Veuve Monsigny predicted to be the top-selling champagne this Christmas, it’s a big ‘if’. And then there’s the weather and the risk of a wash-out like 2012. For all the talk of global warming, I can’t see a Scottish sparkler any time soon.