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PRINCE Charles’ Aston Martin is not only a vintage car, it’s now running on vintage too.

A nice white from a Wiltshire vineyard, to be precise.

As part of cutting his carbon footprint, the prince has converted the 38-year-old classic car - a 21st birthday present from the Queen - to run on 100 per cent bioethanol fuel distilled from surplus British wine.

The Highgrove-based Aston Martin DB6, which clocks up just 480km a year - averaging about 4km a litre, or 4.5 bottles of wine for every mile.

At over $2 a litre, the bioethanol is only slightly cheaper than conventional petrol in Britain, but produces 85 per cent less carbon dioxide.

The grapes used for the prince’s fuel have been fermented into wine on an English vineyard near Swindon, Wiltshire.

Its owners bottle all they can, but cannot produce more than their European Union quota.

Rather than destroy the excess, the vineyard sells it to the Gloucestershire biofuels supplier Green Fuels, where it is distilled.

The green prince has introduced a raft of environmentally friendly measures at his homes, such as reed bed sewerage systems and woodchip boilers at Highgrove and Birkhall, his Scottish residence.

He even tries to have his cows fed on grass, not grain - to cut their flatulence, minimising their emission of the greenhouse gas methane.

Prince Charles’ end-of year accounts, published yesterday, show his income rose by $2.3 million from last year.

He earned almost $40 million last year - the main source of his income is the Duchy of Cornwall, a private estate with properties in 23 counties.

Last year its value rose to $1.35 billion as soaring food prices led to the biggest increase in farm values for 25 years.

Clarence House said Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall had tried to cut costs “at all levels” and their personal spending had dropped by $835,000 to $4.5 million.

It said the prince and his family - including his sons, William and Harry - cost only 8c a year for every person in Britain.

But the boast was spoilt somewhat by the less-than-thrifty antics of his older son.

Prince William’s helicopter jaunt to the Isle of Wight to go to his cousin’s stag weekend cost taxpayers $18,200.

On the two-hour Chinook flight, the prince picked up brother Harry in London for a boozy weekend.

It was part of a series of five helicopter “familiarisation” exercises in April, which cost more than $100,000.

Most controversial was the prince’s decision to practise his landing and take-off in girlfriend Kate Middleton’s garden during an official exercise.