One of my favourite things in life is learning and talking about organic farming and soil and how these translate into delicious wine.
My first real wine education came while working at Tiffany’s Restaurant in Christchurch in 2003 and since then I’ve had an extraordinarily enjoyable journey working in restaurants and wineries in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Spain and France.
It was in 2008, while working in Melbourne, that I began to appreciate and acknowledge the difference that organic farming and sensitive winemaking could have on what was in the glass. My appetite for tasting new things was insatiable (it still is) and there were a few key moments and bottles that year that irreversibly piqued my interest in the relationship between organic farming and great tasting wine.
In 2013, my wife Charlotte and I found ourselves working with legendary farmer Claude Courtois in the Loire Valley. Claude showed us that the best way to make delicious wine is to start with delicious, balanced grapes and that the best way to grow delicious grapes is to have healthy soil, healthy vines and a healthy, biodiverse ecosystem in the vineyard. We realised that the most delicious, digestible and downright drinkable wines were the ones that contained organic grapes and nothing else.