Yearlstone Vineyard - Devon's Oldest Vineyard

Our custom-purpose winery was built in 2002, and the first harvest made in the new winery that year.

The winemaker is Plumpton College trained Juliet. We use only stainless steel tanks, with capacities between 1200-3000 litres, steam-generated sterile bottling and filtration, and our three wine presses can take loads from 50kg to 1.3 tons.

Capacity at the Winery as of 2004 is approximately 25,000 litres.

Please contact Juliet White for any further information about the winery and winemaking.

New Equipment at the Winery

We are investing a lot of money into new winemaking equipment. For example:

In August 2006, we bought a new membrane press from Slovenia, which we used in our recent October bottling run.

This press has a capacity of 3 tons, enabling us to knock off some evenings before midnight! Beautiful juice too, with its gentle pressing - at no more than 1 bar - with very few solids and a high extraction of nearly 70% juice.

We are hopeful of yet another jump in our wine quality with this press.

We have just picked up (February 2007) a brand new GAI 2500 Top monobloc bottle filling and screw capping machine from Clemens engineering - based in the town of Wittlich - to add to the rinser we are buying from Wolverhampton.

On the left is Yearlstone's expert winemaker, Juliet, shaking hands with George Leimbrock (the sales manager of Clemens) as Yearlstone take ownership of the new machine. On the right we see Juliet doing a day's training course on the machine.

Tests on visitor groups have shown the vast majority of people are now perfectly happy with screw caps - a far better technology than corks.

The GAI 2500 is an all-in-one bottling and capping machine, minimising contact of the wine with air in the process - and capable of bottling 2000 bottles per hour.