It seemed, after opening a bottle of prosecco with breakfast to celebrate my arrival in the UK, silly to wait until the Boeing flew over before proceeding on to white, and so Ingrid and Anton (my brother- and sister-in-law) and I steadily made our way through three before matching red with the fondue we had for dinner.

There was an Italian Soave, a Chablis and an English wine, one of only a handful I've ever tasted. And it was very pleasant, fresh and floral with hints of green pepper, rose petals and spanspek, a gentle sweetness and light bodied. This was a Three Choirs Vineyards Premium Selection from the 2007 vintage. Other than disclosing its alcohol content (10.5%) there was precious little information about the wine on the label, but I did like it which meant an internet search.

Three Choirs Vineyards comprises some 70 acres in Newent, Gloucestershire; and its website is as devoid of 'winey' information as the bottle we'd opened; encouraging surfers to explore its accommodation and restaurant options seems to top the agenda. After clicking through other tabs that seemed promising - 'info' and 'adopt a vine' - with no success, I ventured into the online shop and - three clicks later - found the wine list. There, unfortunately, I couldn't find a wine with the exact name. What there was, however, was English House Medium Dry 2008 and a note 'This is the old Premium Selection Medium Dry but with a new name to reflect proposed changes in wine legislation'. I examined the bottle we'd had, there was no mention of 'Medium Dry' on the label but none, after reading the description of the wine and comparing that to what we'd tasted, I concluded that 'my' Premium Selection 2007 was the same wine as English House Medium Dry 2008, a blend of serval blanc, muller thurgau, reichensteiner, orion, madeleine angevine and huxelrebe (40/20/20/10/5/5).

As you can imagine, vines grown in the United Kingdom need to be resistant to the cold, and able to survive wet conditions and the pests and diseases this encourages. This means that there are large plantings of crosses and hybrids, and those blended into the English House Medium Dry are no exception.

To recap, a cross is a crossing of grape varieties of the same species, typically vitis vinifera, the European grapevine. Hybrid grapes are varieties that are the product of a crossing of two or more vitis species, including vitis rupestris (native to North America), vitis labrusca (from northeast North America and vitis amurensis (the Asiatic grape variety).

So, what is Three Choirs Vineyards Premium Select AKA English House Medium Dry? A blend of six grapes - or is it more? There's the six stated on the web site - serval blanc, muller thurgau, reichensteiner, orion, madeleine angevine and huxelrebe. But seyval blanc, the most widely planted variety in England, is a French hybrid of seibel and rayon d'or. Muller thurgau is a cross of riesling and sylvaner. Reichensteiner is a cross between müller-thurgau and madeleine nngevine x calabreser froehlich. Orion was made by crossing optima (vitis vinifera) with the hybrid villard blanc. Madeleine angevine is a cross between madeleine royale and précoce de malingre. And finally, huxelrebe is the product of weisser gutedel and courtillier musqué. That's 13 ... or maybe more!