'It's a bumper year!' Halfpenny Green vineyard in West Midlands predicts a record grape harvest after Britain's baking summer

The vineyard at Halfpenny Green, Bobbington, near Stourbridge, celebrated the biggest crop in the business’s history in 2023 but 2025 might well be the best.

Clive Vickers, owner of Halfpenny Green Wine Estate, has very high hopes for this year’s vintage, which featured its first ripe grapes on August 21 – the earliest since the South Staffordshire vineyard was founded 42 years ago in 1983.

He said: “It’s too early to say how many grapes we’ll be processing as harvest will continue for well over a month, but we would expect between 80 and 90 tonnes of our own grapes. 

“With four heatwaves over the course of the summer, we’re predicting a bumper yield. In terms of quantity, it will be on a par with 2023 but crucially, we think the taste will be even better. The juice is absolutely delicious, which is the best indication of all.”

He said the vines have “loved the weather” this year - adding: “It’s going to be one of the best years we’ve ever had.

“The weather’s not only made it fantastic - it’s brought it forward. We started picking on August 21 - which is two months earlier than in the 90s when we started.

Halfpenny Green is also pressing the grapes of 100 other vineyards across 28 different counties, bringing the final total to an expected 800 tonnes of grapes and positioning the operation as one of the biggest in the UK.

A decision to invest in cutting-edge pressing machinery last year has proven to be a masterstroke. The new equipment allows for a dramatic expansion in production, increasing capacity to around 1,000 tonnes and enabling the creation of up to one million bottles annually.

Clive said: “It was a huge decision to invest in our facilities last year, following the washout of 2024, but we’re so pleased that we did.

“We can now process 18 tonnes per batch, which is a significant increase in our capabilities.

“Overall we've got a facility now for nearly 1,000 tonnes of grapes each year and it should be a big one this year. We’ve got probably four or five weeks to go but it’s looking like as well as the high quality - a high quantity as well.”

Grape picking will continue until mid-October - with the dedicated team of volunteers proving the old adage that many hands make light work.

“We’d be lost without them,” said Clive. “They’re valued friends from the nearby community and we don’t take any of them for granted. Many of them have been with us since we were founded and in a way that’s impossible to quantify, we feel that the wine tastes better because of them.”

He said around 20 to 25 volunteer grape pickers are on site each day, Monday to Friday, during the harvest season - adding: “We run a huge team, we’re running the winery 16 hours a day, and we're aiming to process all the grapes picked each day that night so they go through the presses and into a tank safely where we start the fermentation.”