Thieves left a family-run vineyard ‘completely stripped bare’ after stealing enough grapes to fill 400 bottles of wine.
The gang are thought to have scoped out the 33-acre, award-winning Winbirri Vineyard in Surlingham, Norfolk, during a visit before making off with the load – equivalent to 1,000 supermarket punnets – on September 22.
Rival winemakers are suspected to be behind the plot, as the fruit is not very nice to eat and regulations around selling grapes for wine are so tight.
Owner Lee Dyer predicts the haul could fetch around £8,000 if turned into wine.
Mr Dyer said that people had come to visit just days before the theft saying they wanted to come and pick them to make wine for themselves.
‘It might just be a coincidence but then a few days later after these visits we noticed a couple of the rows had been completely stripped bare,’ he said.
He added: ‘We’re a family-run business, we all work seven days a week and this is a year’s worth of work that we’ve had to do to get these grapes over the line.
‘They’re not an easy crop to grow full stop, no matter what country you’re in.
‘You do have to put a lot of work into them and someone then comes along and feels it’s OK to come on your property and just take it for themselves. To take that much fruit I don’t think it was a single individual.’
The missing fruit was worth around £1,000 but the thieves could get around £8,000 for their value as wine, as there was enough for 400 bottles, the owner Lee Dyer said
The family-run vineyard was robbed of 500kg of grapes, leaving rows of the field ‘completely stripped bare’
The grapes were stolen from the 33-acre award-winning Winbirri Vineyard in Surlingham, Norfolk on September 22
It’s not the first incident of theft from the vineyard, as he said in previous years men had been caught on e-bikes and modified trailers with secateurs in hand, but that grapes had been stolen ‘on a much smaller scale’.
The owner added he is now considering implementing costly security measures such as motion-activated cameras.
Mr Dyer added: ‘This is all expense that you really shouldn’t have to be going to just because someone feels it’s acceptable to come into your property and just take your crop.
Winbirri Vineyard was founded in 2007 by local farmer Stephen Dyer, Lee’s father, and became the first significant wine-making estate in Norfolk.
Mr Dyer, who took over the business from his father in 2010, suspects the thieves wished to use the stolen goods to make their own batch.
He said: ‘The only use of the crop in this way would be for a group or an individual to make wine in a garage.
‘You can’t rock up to a vineyard and say I’ve got grapes to sell – a paper trail has to be achieved and negotiations have to be arranged in advance.
‘Alarm bells would be ringing. Wine grapes, especially with Bacchus [the white wine grape stolen from the vineyard], don’t have enough flesh to be an eating grape.
Mr Dyer said there are a lot of regulations to sell grapes for wine and suspects the thieves wished to use the stolen goods to make their own wine
‘This year, every bottle of wine we produce is from grapes we have grown. If we don’t have that 500kg of grapes, it’s 400 bottles or so of wine we can’t produce.
‘We can only harvest this crop twice per year so we can’t get that back.’
Mr Dyer added: ‘The most disturbing thing is that out there is somebody who thinks it’s okay to walk onto someone else’s property, steal the grapes and think there’s loads there, it doesn’t matter.
‘We work seven days a week and it’s a whole family involvement. It’s the fruits of your labour.
‘You go to all that effort growing but at the last minute, someone feels it’s fine to nick it all.’
Norfolk Police confirmed they had received a report of theft.