Land
Our four small vineyard sites lie on the north-facing hillsides of Omihi, in the Waipara Valley, North Canterbury. Their soils are various combinations of limestone, clay and sandstone.
The Naish family own Home, Damsteep and Netherwood vineyards and lease Skypunch.
We farm these small properties organically and biodynamically, working with the natural systems already present at each site. Our aim is to nurture and regenerate life in the soil, plants and wildlife, building resilience and growing healthy, expressive fruit to make wine.
Organics and biodynamics
Each vineyard is certified organic with BioGro and biodynamic with Demeter. Organics means we avoid using systemic chemicals on our land. We also use regenerative and biodynamic practices: encouraging plant diversity and cover crops while minimising cultivation and soil compaction. We make and apply compost and biodynamic preparations, while our cattle and our neighbours' sheep graze weeds and grasses and recycle nutrients adding another layer of diversity to each site.
We have farmed biodynamically since 2007 and have been certified Demeter certified since 2022. Rooted in Rudolf Steiner's teachings, biodynamics asks us to see each farm as a complete living system, where the vines, soils, animals, people and rhythms of the seasons are all a part of one whole.
It sounds philosophical until you are out in the vineyard at six in the morning, noticing something you would never have noticed otherwise. Biodynamics helps us pay attention and tune in to ensure each farm is humming with its own rhythms.
In the long run, encouraging this natural harmony allows for the land to sustain itself and provide for generations after us. And we hope provide better quality and interesting wine.
Regenerative agriculture
The vineyards are not monocultures. Between the rows you'll find grasses, herbs and flowering plants, sown carefully and now regenerating to build organic matter, attract beneficial insects and keep the soil teeming with microbial life underfoot. You can feel it.
Our low-line angus cattle graze the surrounding blocks all year round, moving to a new block each morning to graze the diverse mix of plants before moving on to the next. Regenerative grazing encourages recycling of nutrients to the land, diversity, building resilient root systems, and sequestering carbon every time the leaves use the sun's energy to photosynthesise sequestering carbon. Encouraging that kind of balanced diversity, and strong ecosystem above and below the ground builds soil health and helps build resilience for our vines in this challenging time of climate change.
The cows (and our neighbour's sheep) have a good life here — a diverse diet of pastures and browsing larger trees like oaks and willows.
We're now serving our beef in the restaurant, our first step into food production beyond wine, and a rewarding one. If we're going to raise animals here, we want to produce tasty, nutrient-dense food that respects the animal. We also want to leave our land in better health than we found it. The process is deeply satisfying.
You can buy our beef mince at the cellar door and sometimes online, or try dishes using it in the restaurant.
Four small hillside vineyards
Explore Home, Damsteep, Netherwood and Skypunch across the north-facing hillsides of Omihi, Waipara Valley.
Home Vineyard
Home Vineyard sits on a gentle north-facing hillside in the Omihi sub-district, six kilometres north- east of Waipara Junction. The soils are Awapuni clay loam over calcium carbonate deposits: the kind of ground that holds memory and gives the wines their texture and weight.
The original vines were planted by Russell and Kimiko Black in 1994. They planted ungrafted Pinot Noir and Mendoza Chardonnay in 3.8-hectare blocks, at a density considered generous at the time. We purchased the property from Russell in 2007, kept the name, and have farmed it organically and biodynamically ever since. The original vines remain on their own roots. They know what they are doing.
Netherwood
Netherwood was planted by Russell Black and Daniel Schuster in 1986, making it the oldest of our four vineyard sites. Its soils are classified as Waipara Greensand – a green-grey, richly glauconitic sandstone – with clay and slopes facing both north and south.
Pinot Noir was planted here on its own roots and has always been farmed without irrigation. The 0.8-hectare Chardonnay block, also planted in 1986, sits on a south-facing hillside, its vines a mass selection thought to have originated from Mendoza Chardonnay cuttings. The combination of aspect, sandstone and clay makes Netherwood a site of layers: red fruit, earthiness and a character quite unlike our other vineyards.
Damsteep
Damsteep sits at the foot of the Omihi Saddle, 10 kilometres north of Home, and it feels different the moment you arrive. The vineyard climbs a north-east facing slope between 140 and 180 metres above sea level, with Pinot Noir on the upper ground and Riesling below. The soils here are fractured limestone and sandstone under clay, dense and complex, the kind that push roots deep and reward patience.
The Pinot Noir was planted in 1999 across five hectares at more than 5000 vines per hectare. The Riesling sits on 2.2 hectares of very dense brown-orange clay interbedded with sandstone and limestone. Both varieties suit the site in different ways: the altitude and the rock give the Pinot Noir its structure and cool-climate tension, while the Riesling finds something mineral and precise in that layered clay that we have never quite been able to fully explain. We have stopped trying and started just enjoying it.
Skypunch
Skypunch sits on the hill directly beside our Home vineyard, close enough that we have been watching it for years. We began leasing it from our neighbour in 2023 and have been farming it the same way we farm everything else: organically, by hand, with as little interference as possible.
The vineyard has 2 hectares of Pinot Gris and half a hectare of Viognier, two varieties new to our line-up and very much at home in the clay soils of this hillside. The Viognier was our inaugural release: 59 cases, unfined and unfiltered, and not entirely what we expected from a first vintage, which is to say it was better. Pinot Gris followed, and we are still working out exactly what this site wants to do. So far it seems to want to be textural, generous and a little unpredictable. We are enjoying finding out.
Climate
Sitting between the mountains and the sea, our vineyards are shaped by North Canterbury’s challenging and changeable climate. Each growing season brings something different.
Soil, Vine, and Duration
What does it actually mean to farm a place? Winemaker Nicholas Brown has been working out the answer since 2007. It’s partly known, partly unknown.
