Our Philosophy

You cant make good wine out of bad fruit. You have to watch your spraying against diseases, this means that sometimes you have to spray weekly – depending on the weather.

You must not over crop – one and an half tonnes per acre and if possible abstain from watering. This results in giving just the most beautiful fruit. In cool climate areas you just have to go the extra mile to make sure that nothing is missed in your endeavours to get your fruit disease free and ripe.

I am committed to making excellent wine – irrespective of cost or time.

This question is often asked of me:

"What do you reckon it costs to produce a single bottle of wine".

My answer is "I wouldn’t have a clue".

What is important is that I have done everything possible to produce outstanding wines from these vineyards so that when you, the customer, sits down after a hard day’s work and relaxes – opens one of our wines and after a sip asks “How good is this wine?” – that’s what it’s all about not how much does it cost me.

Being a marginal area, it is crucial when you pick your fruit. We have to make sure it’s ‘flavour and fruit ripe’, not technically ripe. We do ph and sugar testing in our laboratory at ripening time and the numbers you would think tells us the time to get the fruit off – not so, it’s the walk through the vineyard, tasting the grapes to see if they are ‘flavour ripe’ – that’s when the important decision is made to pick.