Everybody knows specialised winemaking equipment is going to be expensive. Planting a vineyard and building a winery, you can save a fair amount by doing as much as possible of the work yourself, but when it comes to the grape processing equipment, the sorting table, a pneumatic must plunger, a manual fork-lift, a net-spreader and a net-recovery system, not to mention a two-tonne rated lift to move a pallet of wine from cellar to ground-level, you would have to be a mechanical genius to make that kind of kit. Which is why I am so grateful to my friend and neighbour Grant McRostie who has conjured all these and more from a scrapped cherry-picker, a carpet-lifter from the Dead Horse Lane recycling yard and general stuff he had hanging around in his shed. If it wasn’t for your constant help and advice, Grant, we would never have made any wine.

The X-Ray? My left wrist. Fell off a gantry trying to punch down a ferment. Hence the pneumatic plunger.