Watch when Lauren Prebble from LWBTV visited Lizzie and Adam from Kinross to understand their project and taste a “cheeky” Rosé from Coal Pit Wines.
Video transcript:
This story starts out in the pioneering days. Here there was a trading post who provided supplies for neighbouring gold miners who had acquired land. If their bill wasn’t paid the land was brought out and took. As time went on the area got fashioned into a winery and a new legacy of Kinross begun.
So best start out with the exciting news here, you guys are actually partners here of the Kinross, I wanna say brand here but it’s more, ‘community’.
So how did you come to be in little old Gibbston valley?
We love Gibbston, and we have had a really beautiful journey. We met 8 years ago, we were both in the yachting industry, super yachts, and we decided we wanted to move on from the yachting industry and start an ecolodge.
The ironic thing is that my last name is Ross and ‘kin;’ in Scottish means family.
That is precious.
So I will just run through quickly who we have. So we have Hawkeshead who are located literally just up behind us (Dennis and Ulrike). We have Valli, which is Grant Taylor, just down the road – he’s one of our neighbours. Then we have Domaine Thomson and Coal Pit, which is just one of our neighbours up there, then lucky last, we have Alan Brady and Wild Irishman.
He’s like the god father of Gibbston, the god father of winery here?
He’s my Kiwi dad figure.
I think a lot of the smaller wineries they want to concentrate on making the wine and not so much on the tastings or the selling aspect. They just want to concentrate on making their wine excellent.
Should we go to the cellar door, and you can tell me which wine to have on this beautiful day?
Absolutely.
So I would go for this bad boy. We have got two Rosés, but I’d go for this one in particular. Mainly because it is quite a light rosé and on a day like today you don’t want anything too heavy, you just want something light and easy to drink. So this is watermelon and strawberry, well the flavours are, it is not actually watermelon and strawberry, and I will leave you taste – buckle in.
It actually goes well with breakfast, lunch …
So, are you guys a winery, or?
Good question! We have made our first vintage this year, but it is not something that is going on the market. It is definitely drinkable – but we are not looking to get into competition with our wine partners either. So for us it is a process, we will see what happens. We are not quite sure where we would like to take it.
What variety are you thinking?
Ohhh ohhhh ohhh. Well we probably have a Pinot Gris. The wine we did produce was a gewurztraminer.
So we have a bit of accommodation over here?
So onsite we’ve got 14 rooms. This is our heritage orchard which was actually planted by the Kinross Family, so all of this goes way way back to over 100 years ago when the Kinross family settled the land. The history here is just wonderful.
How do you see the Kinross “community” going forward? What other things are you hoping to put in place?
We now do yoga, pilates, yin. We just want to be more of a hub for the area – we’re well on the way to doing it.
I feel excited for Lizzie and Adam as they look to explore new horizons with the Kinross brand. Together with Altitude Tours and LWBTV we hope to uncover some of the stories around our thriving wine region and also sampling so of the best wines there is to have.
