'It was hard to convince anyone you'd got a future in it' - How a Wolverhampton winery has gone from small vineyard to producing a million bottles a year

Halfpenny Green Wine Estate have ridden the wave of popularity of English and Welsh wines since planting their first vines in the early 1980's - and have now invested further in their production facilities with a host of new machinery flown in from Tuscany to hit their million bottle target.

It's a far cry from 1983, when farmer and company founder Martin Vickers planted his first half-acre of vines with the unlikely dream of building a vineyard "on a par with continental sites" at a farm near Wombourne.

But that site now stretches to nearly 30-acres, and as well as growing their own grapes, the firm also processes and presses for other producers from all over the country, employing around 70 people across the business. 

Having developed from a small farm operation themselves, the company is also now advising farmers and producers who are just getting started too.

"We've gone from only making our own wine 20 years ago, around 40,000 to 60,000 bottles, up to a million now," said Martin's son, and now owner, Clive Vickers.

"It's the fastest area of growth in agriculture at the moment, and there's no sign of it slowing down, partly because of the way English and Welsh wine is received and partly because farmers can go into it and grow and sell grapes. It happens the world over and it's a really viable proposition to farmers at the moment, with other crops not really generating the same sort of profit levels.

"We're getting two to three enquiries per week to help establish new vineyards so we do analysis of land suitability, soil sampling and all the different things and help somebody plant the first crop. All the signs are that it isn't slowing down."

Mr Vickers said the perception of UK wines was the "biggest barrier" to getting started forty years ago, but a combination of factors has now led to a renaissance in home-grown products.

"It was hard to convince anyone you'd got a future in it. No-one cared that the Romans did it here 2,000 years ago or any of that," he said. 

"The first ten years was difficult although there was always light at the end of the tunnel. With climate change, people realised we were getting longer growing hours, more daylight ripening hours, new varieties, new techniques in the vineyard and in the winery.

"The farmers markets in the late 90's early 00's certainly changed things. People were going out into their local towns and cities, selling their wares and people were getting to taste it - that started it. Brexit made foreign imported wine more expensive and then of course the pandemic with everyone sat at home Googling 'local produce'. Everyone started stocking English wine and it didn't go away, people kept buying it, which is lovely to see.

"Across all our areas of sales people were responding to English and Welsh wines hugely and I think we're now in line with award winning wines from estates all over the world price wise.

"All of those factors have driven this massive increase in the production and sales of English wine."

Now, demand has grown to such levels that the company has invested in ‘game-changing’ equipment from Tuscany to allow them to produce 300,000 extra bottles this year. 

With the kit installed, the company will now be able to process 300 tonnes of additional grapes and bottle more reds, whites, rosé and sparkling wines than ever, meaning around 1,000 tonnes will be produced in the perhaps unlikely location of the outskirts of Wolverhampton in 2025.

“The new equipment was some time in the planning and really is state-of-the-art, arriving with us from Italy. It is game changing machinery and elevates our processes to even greater levels, " added Mr Vickers.

“We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make the estate as inviting and memorable as it can possibly be, and with the investment we’ve made coupled with lots of hard work, we’re confident that 2025 can be one of our most successful yet."