From Agrichemicals to Advocate: Rex Sunde Honoured
In a classic story of poacher turned gamekeeper, Rex Sunde ditched a career in agrichemicals to help New Zealand winegrowers minimise their spray use.
By making wines organically, with natural yeast and low or no additions “to smudge the story”, he stays true to the voice of those unique vineyards, says Clive, who is chair of Organic Winegrowers New Zealand.
“My head and heart both say that if you can make better and more authentic wines without the use of toxic chemicals why wouldn’t you?”
The genesis of Deep Down is a London wine shop, where Clive – British-born and raised – had his first job on leaving school, and “fell in love with all there was to know about wine”.
One day a winemaker came in to thank him for selling so much of his wine.
“We got chatting about winemaking and something just went off in my head”, Clive says. “I knew I wanted to be a winemaker”.
Inspired by the “right of passage” of the Australian and New Zealand travellers he’d met on their ‘overseas experience’, he decided to emulate their journey and head to Australia for his first vintage, then study winemaking in Adelaide.
Before he left, he met his partner Mel, a “lovely Kiwi” who was soon to return home, so adjusted his plans for love. After a harvest in the Barossa, where he was “hooked” by winery work, Clive moved to New Zealand, taking on post graduate winemaking studies at Lincoln University.
Clive began to make a name for himself as a winemaker at Seresin Estate in Marlborough, where he grew his interest in organic vineyards and low intervention wines.
He was there for 12 years before he and business partner Peter Lorimer established Deep Down in 2019, producing small lots of Marlborough Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc from special sites in the region.
“Deep Down are very lucky to buy some of the best grapes in Marlborough,” he says, using Chardonnay from The Wrekin as an example. The vines are planted on a clay hillside at the certified organic and biodynamic vineyard in Marlborough’s Southern Valleys, with viticulturist Jeremy Hyland taking great care of the vines, fruit, soils and indigenous yeasts of the block. Jeremy is one of the speakers at the Organic & Biodynamic Winegrowing Conference in Blenheim from 16-18 June. “I haven’t met another viticulturist who has such a connection to their site”, Clive says. “It’s a magical and very special place, tended by passionate people.”
