1 How do you describe your role to family and friends? The physical wine maker from grape to bottle.

2 What's your favourite Trinity Hill wine and why? Our Gimblett Gravels Chardonnay – Reminds me of summer on the beach and BBQs

3. What’s your favourite wine you’ve enjoyed this lockdown & why? Lockdown Homage 18 – Cold night in the SPA watching stars

4. What are you most proud of achieving at Trinity Hill? Completing successful harvests with great people creating amazing wines. (especially the 2020 lockdown harvest)

5. What’s your best tip to staying proactive during lockdown? A brisk walk, a change in routine helps recharge

6. What inspired you to join the wine industry? A chemistry background – the alchemy behind wine

7. Go straight to the source and visit sites, some of the best interns I have had have come to me from face to face visits.

8. What is a tip for someone starting out? How huge the influence of weather impacts the harvest – bud burst frosts, humidity and rain, even too much sun!

9. What activity are you most looking forward to when lockdown is over? Going bush for a hunt

10. What’s your favourite thing about living in Hawke’s Bay? Coastal life – Cape Kidnappers

11. Best minute of your life so far? Holding my boy

1.How do you describe your role to family / friends?

The perfect combination of creativity and science: from sampling of the grapes in the vineyards to inform harvest decisions; to inoculating and monitoring ferments to completion; to quality assurance to make sure our wines are microbial stable and at its best prior to bottling. Oh, and there’s a LOT of cleaning.

2.What's your favourite Trinity Hill wine and why? How did you enjoy it?

My current favourite is the 2018 Single Vineyard ‘Prison Block’ – an absolutely stunning example of a Gimblett Gravels Cabinet Sauvignon. Beautiful cassis, savoury herbs and mocha balanced with a great tannin backbone. Lovely drinking now – especially alongside a juicy steak. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this develops with a bit of cellaring.

3.What are you most looking forward to achieving / finishing at Trinity Hill?

2021 was my first vintage with Trinity Hill, so I am really looking forward to seeing the release of these wines when the time comes. It’s looking like a particularly great vintage for our Syrah, with the wines currently showing lovely fruit concentration and purity, combined with great levels of acidity.

4.What is a tip for someone starting out?

I’d say attitude is everything, and it’s never to late for a career change! I’d been working in the financial services industry in the UK for 12 years, and with a planned moved back to Hawke’s Bay with my young family, I craved a change, one that enabled me to still utilise my creative skills, combined with my interest in science and the outdoors. After completing a Grad Diploma in Oenology at EIT in 2020, I replied to an advert for laboratory assistant / cellar hand at Trinity Hill and got stuck in! Being a team player is critical, especially working in a smaller winery, listening is also a pretty key skill – there’s always lots to learn, and new things to try, and I’m lucky to have the oracles of Warren and Damian!