O naturel is our heart project. After growing wines for 20 years in Central Otago, we had the opportunity to create an exciting new project that fitted us exactly.

We are custodians of a piece of land perfect for growing grapes, food, trees, pets and children. The wines that we hope to share with you will reflect a sense of authenticity and simplicity. Less is more and we love wines that are not pretentious but rather an honest reflection of our work. It is important to us to be treading lightly by making carefully considered choices so as to look after our family, our community and the people who choose to drink our wine.

A lot goes into making wines, starting from the almost daily care of the vines and the land that surround them. Our Organic certification is a very important first step to ensure accountability and give you confidence that the basics are covered. We have leaned for many years towards “natural winemaking” which is a difficult or controversial concept for many but for us it just means that if the grapes make their way to the winery in the best possible shape, so we shouldn’t need to use extras. The considered use of sulphur is sometimes necessary, the key word being “considered”. Packaging choices are important with the use of lightweight, partially recycled glass bottles and recyclable screwcaps for our bottled wine. Responsibly sourced NZ wood pulp cartons using minimal tape and plastic, help make our cartons easier to recycle. Alternatively, the use of reusable 20lts stainless steel kegs reduces waste. 

We have 1.5 ha of vines which is the perfect size for the 2 of us to look after by ourselves. We carry out all the vineyard work by hand with multiple passes to ensure the highest level of details and hand pick with our friends in March. To ensure the healthiest soil we encourage biodiversity and use under vines mat to supress weed competition without detrimental cultivation.

In the winery it is all about minimal intervention and celebrating the work done in the vineyard. The ferments are carried out with the wild yeasts, relatively short maceration with the Pinot Noir and cool ferments with the whites. All of our decisions are made through the lens of our environmental impact so we decided to make wines without oak barrels and we use stainless steel barrels instead. None of our wines are fined and the only reason to filter would be to have some residual sugars present. All the wines with tannins never see sulphur and the whites get 10ppm to get through bottling. Our methode traditionnelle tirage and disgorging are done by hand and we do all of our bottling and labelling so all the wines leave the winery when they are ready to enjoy.