Nous

"The more we were in the industry the more we realised it had to start in the vineyards," Rachael says eight years later, from a tiny hand-hewn vineyard overlooking the Brancott Valley.

Choosing vines over villa has meant an eye watering commitment from the Cooks, who spend their days working at Dog Point Vineyards and the hours left over on their 0.29-hectare block, oscillating between the largest certified organic vineyard in New Zealand and the smallest. "Having our own label we were keen to push the boundaries and not do the norm," Murray says. "It's Chardonnay, not Sauvignon, it's high density, it's hill slope, and it's organic and biodynamic from inception as well. Everything is probably the hardest way to do it."

Every post here was hammered in with brute force, every irrigation trench dug with a spade, and every row planted, ploughed, plucked, picked and pruned by hand. "I still look at this and think 'how did we actually do this?' Because it is so much work," Rachael says, looking uneasy as Murray discusses the opportunity to plant a small Pinot Noir vineyard above the Chardonnay. But they've found a rhythm, Murray says, "and we've found ways to make it work better for us". That rhythm includes Rachael driving a mower, or skidding down the hill to weed, and Murray following behind with a Boisselet hand plough, or a hoe thats handle is a fraction of its 2017 length. "It's very manual, because of the scale," he says. "You cannot overcapitalise with heaps of expensive equipment. So Kiwi ingenuity comes into it as well." That philosophy is reflected in the name Nous, which some days refers to the ancient Greek term for intellect and intuitive thought; some days for number 8 wire common sense; and some days simply as French for 'we'.

They bought this "magic" 4ha block in 2017, with a house site looking west to the Omaka Valley and, just over the ridge, and east-facing clay hillside grazing cattle in the Brancott. "As soon as we saw it, we knew it was a special place," Rachael says. They wanted something small enough they could manage on their own, and that's exactly what they've done, with help from their daughters, Chloe and Maddie, and a "motley crew" of livestock, with three Wiltshire rams managing the winter weeding, and two Red Devon cows - Ginger and Nutmeg - providing necessary resources for the vineyard's biodynamic preparations.

Murray is a winemaker and Rachael a marketer at Dog Point Vineyard, and the company's founders have been part of the conversation from the beginning, he says. "It needs both parties to think about it and come up with a plan and make it work." In 2021 the Cooks made one barrel of wine from their young vines, leaving the winemaking to indigenous yeasts and meticulously tended fruit. "We knew everything we had done within the vineyard side of things was right in terms of what we wanted to do from a quality aspect," Rachael says. They watched and tasted and bottled, then waited eight months before deciding to release their first Nous, with 300 bottles swiftly snapped up. "People have followed the journey with us and were as excited to see the bottle of wine as we were." By 2022's harvest the vine yielded a little over a barrel, and last year two barrels, with the wines destined for the likes of Milbrook, Blanket Bay and Arbour, and to customers quick enough to get in directly.

And for all the hard yards there's seldom a time they'd trade idyll moments in a villa for miniscule winemaking on a hill. "For me the interest in the small-scale stuff is really where my mind is at and what I am attracted to," Murray says. "You live and breathe it."