Fixes #709 to a large extent, but does it by introducing a workaround tracked in #740. What remains to be fixed is something I intend to fix in #739 by dropping Python 3.8 support.
I also removed a try block, as we now declare wheel explicitly as a build env dependency via pyproject.toml
I also removed a try block, as we now declare wheel explicitly as a build env dependency via pyproject.toml