Lucy Edmiston writes Lucy Edmiston is a Manchester-based writer, mum-of-two, and long-suffering football widow. Her dedicated interest in wine is purely social with no formal expertise, although she is validating her snobbery this summer by finally taking a WSET course. Lucy is known for her wine-inspired poetry, @haiku_luwritesabout wine, and she leads poetry writing workshops for the community in South Manchester based on that theme. Lucy hopes to someday travel the world wine-tasting and publish a coffee table book of poems and photos from the trip. It’s not at all a self-serving project.
Bottled Dreams
By the time you read this, the 2026 FIFA World Cup will have been won. You will already know which of the 48 qualifying teams has hoisted the 18-karat gold trophy and claimed the highest accolade; World Champions of Football.
Right now, as I write this on a dreary afternoon in Manchester in early June, I do not. But England’s trembling hope is palpable.
England is known as the birthplace of modern football and is home to the world famous Premier League, making the World Cup stakes high and the pressure atmospheric. Playgrounds rise with choruses of “Vindaloo na-na!”, whispers around pub tables are “It’s coming home,” and the 38-year old dreams of my husband hang in the balance.
Every four years brings about a uniting moment in football history, and even the least sports enthused gather their latent support and show commitment, loyalty and optimistic investment in their countries’ squads.
At this point, I should admit I am a part-time football fan. I keep a cursory eye on my husband’s beloved Arsenal’s ups and downs, forewarned is forearmed after all, but even I find the excitement and drama of the World Cup exhilaratingly contagious. The much-anticipated global tournament whips the whole world into a frothy frenzy of national unity and patriotism, the World’s eyes on glory and the shiny prize.
And as my husband is devoted to football, I am to wine. However, unlike his unwavering allegiance to a single football club and national team, I am not as committed to any one grape, region, country or method. I am equanimous.
But being an unmoored wine drinker is going to pose significant problems throughout a tournament that’s fuelled by national pride. Pairing wine and the World Cup is going to be patriotic minefield.
All the obvious and most accessible countries are immediate red cards. For example, given they are the reigning world champions and have won the Cup not once, not twice, but three times, anything from Argentina would be tantamount to treachery.
The French are benched too, France being two-time winners and the 2022 runners up. So, that is a summery rosé from Provence relegated.
And if you’re suggesting a Riesling, you know even less about football than I do.
I could look outside the qualifying World Cup nations, but Burkina Faso, Libya and Zimbabwe are not best known for their achievements in viniculture.
And neither is England. We have no reputation, historical fame, or an accumulated legion of fans in the wine game. We are the emerging underdogs, underestimated and eager to make a bottle-smashing debut on the world wine-producing field.
So, for an England supporter, like me, the best pairing for the FIFA World Cup 2026 has got to be a homegrown English wine to champion a homegrown English team.
My bottle of choice will be grown, auspiciously, in one of the three Home Counties; Essex, Sussex or Kent (in the hope that football will finally ‘come home’), where the highest concentration of UK vineyards has sprung up in recent years. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but at the time of the last World Cup in 2022, the English pickings would have been significantly slimmer with only around two hundred producers to choose from nationwide. In 2026, there are around one thousand. That is a 500% improvement in performance! Come on, England!
The Home Counties, like the Champagne region in France, are blessed with a pale, flinty and chalky soil and therefore, in flattering imitation of our neighbour’s most famous drink, grow the same grape varietals; Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, to produce our own sparkling wines.
The grapes’ origins might be risky to admit to among the most stalwart of loyalists, but I would argue that although the vines’ heritage might be French, the grapes were born and bred on English soil. So, by birthright, the sparkling wine is entirely English.
But this hat trick of champagne grapes does not walk alone. The captain, and asset in my opinion, to the English equivalent is the floral Bacchus vine, contributing an effort of 75% in some vintages.
I had better not go into Bacchus’ distant European origins, but the flavour has flourished in this region and each sip conjures our bucolic countryside; apple blossom and elderflower, grass and nettle. The green and pleasant land.
But besides its gathering commercial success and its delicious representation of our country, I’m choosing a Bacchus-forward, English sparkling wine for the sheer celebration of it, whether we win or lose. This choice is not still and serene, nor idle on the sidelines. It has a patient tension, a bated breath before the muselet, or I should say muzzle, is removed and the nation’s effervescence released.
We are a small island with bottled dreams. I’m backing England’s victory with a wine on the verdant verge of taking the world by storm.
Published unedited and in accordance with the rules of the competition published here.
