PODCAST
S3- E01 | Wine, Country and Cancer with Nick Dugmore (Duggie)
Kangaroo Island / McLaren ValeNick Dugmore is the driving force behind Stoke Wines, writing a new chapter for Australian viticulture on Kangaroo Island.
The Young Gun of Wine winner, Nick brings a thoughtful approach to regenerative farming and a passion for the connection to people and place that makes wine special. Receiving a shock stage 3 bowel cancer diagnosis at 39, Nick’s had a major rethink on everything from his relationship with alcohol to how we look after the land, our health and each other. Not one to shy away from the tough conversations he’s now putting his voice out there co hosting “The Power of Awareness” podcast to help inform and inspire people living with cancer. He’s passionate, determined and not afraid to call for change where its needed. If you ask him, he’ll tell you he loves wine even more since cancer for the connection and joy it brings when we treat it and ourselves with respect. Here’s Nick… Read more...Nick Dugmore
Innovator + Winemaker + Regenerator Website: Stoke Wines Podcast: The Power of Awareness Podcast | Podcast on Spotify Articles: https://wbmonline.com.au/winemaker-talks-about-cancer-and-drinking-thoughtfully/ https://younggunofwine.com/winemaker/the-stoke-nick-dugmore/ https://stokewines.au/blogs/news/i-am-hacking-the-future-of-shiraz-project https://stokewines.au/pages/the-cancer-blog-chemo-chair-stories The Stoke brand is a tribute to the largely untapped potential of Kangaroo Island as a premium wine-growing region. Nick Dugmore makes wines that are expressive of the relatively cool, wind-swept vineyards of KI, with a focus on lighter to midweight styles with food and conviviality in mind. The leased Cassini Vineyard now provides the bulk of the fruit for the label, with Dugmore farming the site regeneratively side by side with his father.
“We promote wine first, then our region, and then what we do personally,” says Dugmore. “We aim to make wines that reflect their place, always minimal intervention after a huge focus on quality in the vineyard. They range from drink now to wines with structure and longevity. Always consistent, reliable and made with a lot of care and attention.” Dugmore is a South Australian native, whose “love affair with Kangaroo Island began on a surf trip around Australia in a banana-yellow Ford Falcon in 2008”. That trip never made it past KI, and wine marketing and vintage work there followed. He believes deeply in the island’s immense untapped potential to produce premium fruit, and to make extraordinary wine. Its low humidity and drying sea breezes make it a simpler proposition to grow organically, and most vineyards are dry grown. It benefits from the moderating maritime influence that McLaren Vale gets, but it is much cooler and tends to ripen fruit more in line with the Adelaide Hills, allowing time to build flavour over a long ripening period. In 2020 we took control of a 12-acre vineyard on Kangaroo Island. Under advice from a viticulturalist we are implementing changes, specifically to the pruning regime, which unfortunately meant reduced yields in 2021. So far, we’re delighted with the quality – we just wish there was more of it! Farming grapes is a long game, and we’re prepared to put the work in now to be able to work with quality fruit in the long term.” Studying a Bachelor of Wine Marketing at the University of Adelaide, Dugmore then did some hands-on vintage work to understand wine a bit better. That grunt work made him realise that he’d followed the wrong path, so he went straight back to university to study oenology. Since then, he has done vintages in the Barossa valley, McLaren Vale, Currency Creek, Adelaide Hills and elsewhere on Kangaroo Island, as well as the Okanagan Valley, in Canada, Central Otago, in New Zealand, and for two seasons in Bordeaux. Dugmore met his future wife, Bec, in Central Otago, where she had been working and studying for some years, earning her Graduate Diploma in Viticulture and Oenology at Lincoln University, Canterbury. The pair moved to South Australia where she worked making sparkling wine for some big players. |
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