WINE and cider makers in Oxfordshire are raising their glasses to the glorious spring sunshine.

They are keeping their fingers crossed for a vintage year after the best possible start to the season.

Warm, sunny spring weather is just what they needed for a bumper fruit crop.

However, the county’s food farmers are rueing the lack of April showers.

Provisional Met Office figures for April indicate it was the warmest on record with many parts of the UK seeing temperatures 3-5C warmer than normal.

The month was also the 11th driest April in the UK.

Bob Nielsen, who owns Brightwell Vineyard, near Wallingford, with his wife Carol, said he couldn’t have hoped for better weather for his 12 acres of vines. He said: “We are off to a brilliant start, but the fat lady doesn’t sing until October.

“And given the vagaries of the English weather we could still be let down by a cold, wet autumn.”

Mr Nielsen, who has run the vineyard for 11 years, said the warm, dry spring meant this year’s grapes were about two weeks ahead of schedule.

And if the weather remains kind it will lead to more intense flavours this autumn when the volunteer pickers haul in the fruit.

“We need it to stay warm, with plenty of sunshine,” he said. “A few rainy days won’t matter.”

In Upton, award-winning cider maker Robert Fitchett and his wife Val are also hoping for a great year.

He said: “Our blossom was three weeks earlier than we expected.”

But now the couple, who run Upton Cider Company, near Didcot, which produces 12,000 pints per year, want some rain to keep the crop on track.

And they’re hoping there won’t be a late frost, after a very late one last year wiped out half their crop.

Mr Nielsen said English wine was the most improved of any country over the past 10 years. He said the “Thames Valley Bowl”, nestled between the Cotswolds, Chilterns and North Downs, had the perfect microclimate for vines and shared its chalky sub-soil with more famous wine producers in northern France.

Mr Nielsen is keeping his fingers crossed for a good Wimbledon – but not because he’s a tennis fan: “That is when the flowers blossom.

“If we get a nice Wimbledon, we get a nice fruit set.”

Meanwhile, county farmers are praying for more rain.

Kevin Rillie, group secretary for the county NFU, said: “Yields are linked to spring growth, and shortage of rain must now be seriously impacting harvest.

“World wheat prices doubled in little more than three weeks last year when it became clear that world harvests were short due to dry weather.”