Helio

Dave Nash is outlining the vision that seeded Helio, the company he created with husband and wife winemakers Matt Kirby and Sarah Little. Dave and Matt met in 2018 while filming New Zealand wine film A Seat at the Table, bonding over their mutual love of Chardonnay, and musing about a little project that’s raison d’etre would be making great ones. Dave didn’t think much would come of it until Matt called a few weeks later to say he had found the perfect vineyard to lease. What had been an interesting conversation suddenly got real. Helio (named to reflect the connection between wine and the sun) was launched in the first 2020 lockdown, and Sarah quickly came on board, as a driving force in vineyard management and winemaking operations.

As Chardonnay-obsessives around the same ages and stages of life, Helio represented the chance to have some skin in the game and to risk a few different things from what their day jobs offered, including Matt’s Chardonnay-intense role as Chief Winemaker for Clearview Estate. While Chardonnay is at its heart, Helio has expanded to encompass a Tempranillo-based rosé, a Hawke’s Bay Syrah and a Martinborough Pinot Noir. Dave says the chance to buy Syrah from Warren Gibson and Lorraine Leheny of Bilancia, and Pinot Noir from Larry McKenna, was simply too good to turn down. “When you get to work with great growers, why try to do it better than what they do?” This vintage they will also be picking Gamay from Hawke’s Bay’s Two Terraces Vineyard.

While their focus on quality fruit and wines is clear, the rest of the strategy has been a little more ad hoc. “We initially thought it would be just family and friends indulging us, but then quickly sold-out pre-release,” Dave says. They have subsequently built a solid direct-to-customer following, and have an unexpected but burgeoning on-premise presence. And while they could sell all their production domestically (currently around 1,500 cases), they are building a tiny export portfolio based upon keen buyers in Japan and the United States, with the United Kingdom soon to be in the mix. Dave presents this as mostly via people approaching them, but there’s no doubt that he, Matt and Sarah are savvy and enthusiastic operators.

Helio also benefits from a bit of benign neglect, Dave says. “We never get a chance to overthink things – be it picking, winemaking, marketing or sales, and we have to be a tightknit unit to pull that off. We always seem to have more than three opinions on anything, and at times we have had some robust, um… discussions, but any differences are minimal as ultimately, we are all focused and united on the same goal. There are no egos here”. No egos, just great Chardonnay.