Vineyard invests £1m in Italian wine equipment

Halfpenny Green has imported stainless steel containers and tanks from Tuscany, Italy

A vineyard has invested close to £1m in an operation to import more wine-making equipment from Italy.

Halfpenny Green Wine Estate, on the Staffordshire-Shropshire border, has used the money to boost production capacity on the family-run estate to about one million bottles a year.

Owner Clive Vickers said they had invested in more tanks, a bigger grape presser and filtration equipment from Tuscany, as well additional staff.

"We're one of the bigger wineries in the country, we're doing a quarter of a million bottles a year for our own brand," he said.

The Halfpenny Green vineyard opened in 1983 on the Staffordshire-Shropshire border

Halfpenny Green spans almost 30 acres and includes a restaurant, farm shop and wine-tasting facility.

Mr Vickers' dad Martin planted half an acre of vines with his son in 1983, before opening the vineyard to the public six years later.

"There's 1,200 vineyards across England and Wales, that's how fast it's grown. We've got capacity in here for nearly a million bottles a year now," Mr Vickers said of their estate.

"We started contract wine making about 20 years ago, when somebody asked me if I could make them wine."

He has invested in 10 new stainless steel tanks which had their own cleaning system and temperature control, as well as a new filtration plant which aids wine clarification.

"In the summer, you walk in here and it feels nice and cool. And in the winter it's actually a bit warmer than outside," he said.

"Once the grapes come in, we are flat out all year round, so the harvest is the busiest spell, and then we're busy blending, filtering."