One-horsepower solution
David Herd broke boundaries when he planted Marlborough's first vineyard in 1892, surrounded by sheep and crops.
This Occitan expression from the south of France is the inspiration for the winemaking couple's bespoke label A Thousand Gods, a tiny project fuelled by learnings from Cahors, organic fruit from the Waihopai Valley, a garage winery in Rolleston, and a conviction for making natural wines without faults.
Lauren, Australian, and Simon, British-Kiwi, were travelling the world doing vintages when they became increasingly interested in organic and biodynamic vineyards, the source of some of the best wines they tried. Then natural wines caught their attention, with some terrible examples, but also "amazing long-lived wine that could age in bottle", says Simon. "That really changed things for us... It sort of threw out the window all the things we learned at university. It was really exciting."
Then came a decade in Cahors, South-West France, immersed in the natural wine scene. "A lot of winemakers were just throwing stuff agains the wall and seeing it stuck," Lauren says. "It was an incredibly steep learning curve." Their success has stemmed from seeing the magic and mistakes made by others, Simon adds. "You have to come in with really strong rigour."
Their A Thousand Gods plan was born in France six years ago, when they decided to move back to New Zealand, so their young son could be closer to his grandparents. That meant finding organic fruit from afar for the 2019 vintage, with only a few distant contacts to call on in New Zealand. One of them was Sam Weaver, founder of Churton, who they knew was doing something different in his family's Marlborough vineyard, with close plantings, organic certification and biodynamic practices. But it wasn't until Simon flew down for vintage that he realised how exceptional the fruit was. "It was serendipity", he says. "We were hoping to make a wine that stood up to what we were used to. When we got here, we realised the potential was massive."
Six years on, they are balancing parenting and day jobs with A Thousand Gods, based in a small winery beneath their Rolleston apartment, and getting plenty of attention from the likes of Viva Magazine (New Zealand's Best New Winery 2023; Top 10 Most Exciting Wineries of New Zealand 2024) and now The Real Review.
Natural wines can be a hard sell in the relatively conservative wine culture of New Zealand, which makes the couple even more determined to ensure every wine is clean and fault free. But, having seen the routes to failure, and to success, they have learnt to mitigate the added risks in making wine without sulphur. "It's just a different way of working."
