OUR APPROACH

MEASURE BEFORE SPECIFYING

Vineyards are advised on by anecdote more than any other agricultural sector, partly because the feedback loop is a year long and partly because everyone involved has an opinion about wine. We open an engagement by measuring: soil pits rather than auger holes, petiole analysis on a fixed grid, bunch counts on marked vines rather than an impression formed while walking.

That first season is usually more expensive than the client expected and produces fewer instructions than they hoped. It is also the season that makes the following five worth having.

SPECIFY IN WRITING

Every operation we recommend is written as a specification: what to do, on which blocks, between which dates, and what it should look like when it is finished. Contractors get the same document the owner does.

This is unglamorous and it is where most of the value sits. A shoot thinning brief that says “thin to twelve to fourteen shoots per metre, remove doubles first, leave the count on the cordon rather than the spur” produces a different vineyard from one that says “thin the canopy”.

REVIEW AGAINST WHAT HAPPENED

At the end of each season we write up what was specified, what was done, what the fruit did, and where the two diverged. Where our recommendation was wrong, the report says so — a consultant who has never been wrong in writing is a consultant who is not reviewing their own work.

WHAT WE WILL NOT DO

We do not accept commission from nurseries, contractors, agrichemical suppliers or equipment dealers. We do not manage vineyards we have an ownership interest in. We do not take on a block whose owner wants a document supporting a decision they have already made, and we have turned down work on that basis often enough to make it a policy rather than a preference.