Nick-Mills-Rippon-Central-Otago

For Rippon’s Nick Mills, expression of place is everything. He’s part of the fourth generation of his family to live and work on the farm his great-grandfather, Percy Sargood, bought on the banks of Lake Wānaka in Central Otago in 1912; a place which has shaped, among many things, the way he makes and thinks about wine.

Since inception, the family have let the land guide their farming decisions, experimenting with a variety of crops, animals, flowers and fruit trees, and then cultivating those that thrive. It was no different when Nick’s father, Rolfe Mills, decided to pursue viticulture in the early 1980s. Around 25 to 30 grape varieties and selections (“I think it was pretty much everything he could find in the country!”) were included in the initial plantings, with cuttings from the best-performing used to establish new blocks.

“Decisions were made on what was most comfortable in the site,” Nick says. “What doesn’t need pushing or pulling? What doesn't need adjustments to the must – sugar, water, acid, nutrients? What's showing the best vine architecture, the best bunch architecture, all that stuff. That's what we were led by; they had to be able to fend for themselves in vine, but also in wine.

“Over the years, more pinot noir cuttings were taken (and planted) than any other variety,” he adds. Today, the variety accounts for 10 of Rippon’s 14ha of vines, with riesling, gewürztraminer, sauvignon blanc, and osteiner rounding out the rest. 

Even after four years living and working in Burgundy – including at the famed Domaine de la Romanée-Conti – it’s still his family's patch of dirt that most influences Nick’s winemaking. A desire to produce wines that speak clearly and specifically of Rippon means focusing on “shape and feel” rather than “smells and flavours”. 

“For me, if I'm drawn to trying to help this land reach its potential and express itself and that potential through wine, I don't care about the smells and flavours,” he says. “They're important, they're attractive, they can bring people to the wine, but I’m much more interested in the genetic information over the attraction factors.

“The difference between Vosne-Romanée and Nuits-Saint-Georges, for example, is not cherries and plums – it's the shape,” he continues. “Same with our Tinker’s Field and Emma's Block – the difference is not flavours and smells, but the shape and feel of the wine.” 

With these elements predominantly derived from the dry matter, or what Nick calls “the truth of the wine” – the skins, seeds and stems – this is largely achieved in the vineyards, which have been certified biodynamic since ’03 (although effectively managed this way forever). 

In the winery, to solubilise that dry matter into the wine, he chooses “wild and warm autolytic ferments” and a slightly oxidative environment. The wines then typically spend 18 months, or two winters, in barrel – 15 per cent new oak in the first year, then neutral for the second winter – and are then released up to two years after bottling.

“Some people say that winemaking is an art, but, for us at least, it’s more of a craft. It’s deferring to the raw material, to understanding the soils and what's underfoot, to standing behind the fruit, and trying to guide all that through a natural secondary process into an inert vessel and not get in the way too much. And that's the interest, that's the craft.”

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