This whole making clean wine sure is a dirty business.

Hollywood actor, Cameron Diaz, recently dipped her toe in the wine industry by launching a wine label that differentiates itself through the concept of being ‘clean’. What that means is, the wine is void of any synthetic chemicals like pesticides and herbicides and any additives that would usually be introduced during the winemaking process.

You know what? We’re behind her 100%!

Although we can see the appeal, we don’t use the term ‘clean’ for wines that are made naturally and that don’t use any chemicals. We prefer ‘certified organic’. It shows we’ve had an independent body identify that we do what we say we do. At its heart, organic winemaking is about being able to work a farm without relying on chemical intervention. All our wines are also vegan suitable. We prefer to let time and gravity ‘fine’ our wines to provide clarity and ensure they arrive with you tasting the best.

To be honest, making organic wine is a bloody dirty business! It requires a breath of knowledge and constant learning about how the land responds to changing seasons, drought or floods, frosts or bugs. It’s labour intensive and hands-on and that’s not just at harvest time. Anyone who has pruned a vine in the middle of Winter in close to zero temperatures can attest to that!

We call this piece of land we live and work on ours, but we really know it won’t be ours for long in the grand scheme of things. Even now we share it with a lot of other living things that deserve a harmonious existence. There is no place for chemicals at Huia and no place for animal by-products in our wine.

So we just wanted to say, cheers to Cameron for using her profile to shine a light on the other side of winemaking. We’re chiming in to say: we grow our grapes and make our wines and we do it organically, without using any chemicals. We get our hands very dirty!

Huia wines are certified organic, suitable for vegans and made using minimal sulphur additions. That all sounds serious and truthfully, we are serious about that side of the biz. However, when it comes to drinking the stuff, we’re not so serious at all and as long as there’s a platter of good nosh on the table and good mates around it, then we’re sitting in our happy place.

To support more organic farmers learn about our fellow members of MANA Winegrowers and why not try a bottle? It’s pretty darn delicious you know!

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