Author Archives: John

Cellar Daughters

First barrels filled!

Tash, Wren and Imogen helping me in the cellar on Sunday. I promised to take them to the beach afterwards, so they were happy to come along. They're a few ...

Pressing Semillon

It's been a long day of pressing, made a bit longer by the normal harvest electrical hiccups. I think that by the time I retire as a winemaker, I could ...

First juice in the cellar

White Semillon or ‘Groendruif’ (left) mutates into Red Semillon (right) in the same block

Our first grapes of the season are in the cellar now, the juice busy cold-settling, to be racked off as clear juice in 24 hours time. I only picked a ...

Harvest 2013

Harvest is an intense time of year, when a year's worth of growing comes down to days and hours of effort to make sure that we do justice to the ...

First vineyard

Rosa Kruger, Peter-Allan, Kosie and Graham Weerts hashing out harvesting plans.

This is the vineyard where it all began, for me anyway. Thanks to the efforts of Rosa Kruger, Peter-Allan Finlayson and Chris Alheit in rescuing this parcel and offering me ...

Thorne & Daughters

Hi, Thorne & Daughters is our small family business that we're just in the process of setting up. I am so dedicated to creating handcrafted wines from mind-blowing little parcels of ...