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Extent of multi-millionaire lottery winner’s vineyard revealed
EuroMillions winner Adrian Bayford could have the vineyard capacity to produce 25,000 bottles per year, db can reveal.
In April, the drinks business reported that Adrian Bayford who won £148 million in the EuroMillions jackpot in 2012, had planted an English vineyard and was planning to enter the wine business. Now, db can reveal the extent of his plantings and the style of wine he intends to make.
Bayford began establishing a vineyard within his Cambridgeshire estate last May and is expected to gather his first harvest in two years time.
One of the lottery winner’s friends quipped on social media: “Hopefully we’ll all be able to buy Château Bayford soon!”.
Aerial imagery of the estate in Haverhill indicates that his plantings stretch across 40,000 square metres (around four hectares), most or all of which is dedicated to Pinot Meunier vines.
Meunier is one of the hero grapes used in the production of sparkling wine, with the variety accounting for roughly a third of all plantings in Champagne. Frequently used within a blend, English wineries are increasingly starting to make single-varietal Pinot Meunier wines, with Exton Park, and Bluebell Vineyard Estates two such producers.
According to WineGB’s 2022–2023 industry report, Pinot Meunier now accounts for around 70% of total plantings in the UK, along with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Meunier currently stands at 379ha in the UK.
It is unclear whether Bayford’s Cambridgeshire vineyard was one of the 87 new vineyards officially registered in 2023, which brought the total number of UK vineyards up to a milestone 1,000.
The figure indicates the continued climb of the English wine trade, and WineGB chair Nicola Bates has vowed that 2024 will turn out to be the “year of growth” for English wine, even more so than last year when sales rose by 10% to reach 8.8m bottles.
In 2022, Bayford allegedly put his Haverhill estate on the market for £12 million, but there were no interested buyers. The addition of the new vineyard, should he wish to sell in the future, will significantly increase the value of the property, especially if it also includes his winemaking business and equipment.
English wine became an unlikely supporting character in the latest novel by Richard Osman, with the author hinting that viticulture could be a good route for the criminals in his story to go straight and run a legitimate business.
“Luca is dead and the Afghans won’t trust him any more. Time to diversify. He’s been talking to the English sparkling wine people. There’s a plot of land in Sussex, in Ditchling, south-facing slope, chalky soil, the works,” a passage in the novel reads.
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