A COUNTY vineyard is up for sale after the owner decided to take a step back.

The Sixteen Ridges Vineyard at Shrawley has been put on the market by owner John Ballard, who has farmed 120 acres for more than 50 years.

Now though, he has decided to step back from farming life, having established the Sixteen Ridges Vineyard in 2008 as one of a series of business ventures at Church Farm.

Mr Ballard said: “We really had no choice but to diversify as we are not a large farm.

"We have been involved in dairy and a wide range of arable over the years, but also with more unusual crops such as asparagus and salad onion.

"We opened a farm shop, sold dried flowers and also ran a variety of courses.

"We also developed a successful wedding venue, and originally, we thought that would be the perfect platform for us to market wines produced on site.”

John’s wife Anne, who started and ran many of the non-farming ventures, died in 2006 and the family decided to sell the wedding venue but to press on with the vineyards.

The farm also includes two agricultural buildings, 62 acres of arable land and amenity woodland.

The thirty-plus tonnes of grapes grown each year are turned into a variety of wines: red, rose and sparkling by Haygrove Evolution in Ledbury, and are sold under the under the Sixteen Ridges brand.

Simon Day, managing director of Haygrove Evolution, said: "I advised John from the very early days when I was working as a consultant and really, we established our wine brand to ensure that we could use the grapes the vineyard has supplied rather than the other way around.

“All the factors for producing wine, such as soil type and aspect, combined with the superb management of the land, means that the vineyard produces what we regard as the finest fruit in the UK in terms of quality and consistency, and we have developed a very close working relationship which has resulted in many award-winning wines.”

Tom Pike, of Fisher German, said: “Church Farm is a very good example of rural entrepreneurship. The Ballard family have used the assets of their land to create a valuable crop which provides a very good income alongside more traditional farming.

"Sixteen Ridges is nationally renowned for producing some of the best wines in the UK and much of that is directly attributable to the work at Church Farm.”

Details of Church Farm are at www.fishergerman.co.uk/residential-property-sales/land-for-sale-in-shrawley-worcester-wr6/36384