14/08/2024
Meet the Maker- Michelle & Helen from .river.wines
🍇Are you from the Nambucca Valley?
Neither of us are from the Nambucca Valley. However it is to be our forever home.
🍇What do you make?
We strive to produce wines that reflect their origin, meaning that they show the characteristics that we associate our cool climate vineyard site from where our fruit is grown. Wine conveys a feeling of its source from within. The region in which the grapes are grown is embedded in the taste, aroma and colour of the wine.
The vineyard’s cool climate is important to our business because it allows grapes to ripen relatively slowly over a longer period than in warmer, more continental regions. This slower ripening, in turn, results in fruit that has more intense flavours, more acidity and better balance which combine to make elegant wines of flavour, intensity and elegance - all of which beautifully match a wide range of foods.
All Twisted River vines have been hand-pruned and picked, adhering to a strict benchmark that aims to maintain the wine’s growing reputation for quality and consistency.
🍇How did you get into viniculture?
If you ask how, it all began, expect to have some time on your hands. Apparently, it’s a long story, beginning with an equally long lunch at a leading Orange restaurant. During the sumptuous meal Helen revealed to her fellow diners that she had always dreamt of running a vineyard.
It transpired that the vineyard responsible for the tantalising local wine they were consuming that day was in fact for sale. Helen very loudly announced at least three times that they would like to buy the Vineyard and Michelle saying very loudly no way. Some months later they signed the deeds for the property!
🍇What did you do before you got into running a vineyard?
Helen & Michelle worked for years in the health industry in palliative care. Palliative care is care for the dying and it teaches you that life is short. If you have a dream, you must go forth and do it.
🍇What are you currently working on?
Helen & Michelle will tell you that our future is about continuing to share bloody good wine, at all the best markets up and down the Mid North Coast.
