About Us
Lanchester Wine Cellars Ltd. was started back in 1980 by Tony Cleary & 2 colleagues from United Rum Merchants. By 1985, both of these partners had left the business & Lanchester has since been owned by the Cleary family.
The Cleary family all, along with Lanchester’s highly trained experienced staff, run the business & handle an increasingly wide range of requests & services in an ever changing & competitive market. Tony’s passion is clear to see, which together with the other Lanchester Group companies, Lanchester Gifts, Greencroft Bottling Company Ltd & Lanchester Properties, all jointly run by Tony’s wife Veronica, should ensure another 30 years as one of the biggest suppliers in the North.
Starting as a wine importer, Lanchester has grown into the large group of companies it is today. Originally importing just from European Old Word countries such as France, Germany & Italy, Lanchester has gradually started to add to these varieties, & followed the UK consumers’ demand for the fruity, floral styles of New World wines. We now import from all over the New & Old World, specializing in quality wines from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, California & some excellent Chileans.
As well as importing, Lanchester also bottles & exports various products via Greencroft Bottling, Lanchester Group’s on site bottling plant. From quality whiskeys to China, New World wines to Australia & the New World, to our high quality select own brand wines, Lanchester ships worldwide, as well as bonding & dealing with customs & excise documentation.
Lanchester now controls over 230,000 sq. ft. of bonded space. This is utilised by Lanchester & over 30 other companies both large and small to hold stock under duty suspension. Our fully trained staff is able to offer storage, handling, & picking of orders. We can also arrange worldwide shipping, both through our own transport operation & alongside our shipping partners.
Our fleet of vehicles is under constant review and has been grown to meet our increasing distribution requirements, ranging from 44 tonne Artics down to 3.5 tonne delivery vans. Our vehicles make regular deliveries throughout the UK, from Elgin in the far North to Plymouth in the South West. Together with our distribution partners we can offer an excellent service covering not only the whole of the UK but also Southern Ireland.
We are currently undergoing an ongoing replacement scheme to aim to replace all our vehicles with the most environmentally friendly, low emission alternative available. Being green is an important issue to Lanchester, & will be shortly installing two wind turbines on our site on the high hills of Durham. These will eventually provide all & more of the power needed to run the entire Lanchester site, including Greencroft Bottling which runs 24/7.
In 2010 Lanchester commissioned 2 site extension projects. The first to build new staff facilities including a canteen & changing rooms onto the Greencroft Bottling unit to accommodate the ever growing number of staff, particularly during busy bottling periods. The second is an 80,000 sq ft Lanchester Wines warehouse extension, adding to the current storage space we already occupy. Needless to say the well publicised horrendous weather caused some major delays.
The wine & spirit market is forever changing, with duty constant increases & some unfortunate press, it certainly isn’t dull! However with Lanchester’s established success & commitment to constant change, we foresee a bright future.