The Tinpot Hut wines are made primarily from fruit grown on winemaker Fiona Turner?s vineyard in Blind River. Fiona, who has worked with Matt Thomson for a number of years, supplements her own grapes with fruit from other growers in Marlborough and Hawkes Bay. The tinpot hut that gave its name to Fiona?s brand is an old mustering hut in the remote hills between the Wairau and Awatere Valleys. These huts were used as a base for musterers as they rounded up the sheep that had been in the hills from spring to autumn. The name links Marlborough?s past as a sheep farming centre with its current state as one of the world?s most dynamic wine regions.

Two different clones of Syrah sourced from a single vineyard site in Hawkes Bay in the subregion of Dartmoor from some of the oldest Syrah vines planted in New Zealand. Ripening late into the autumn this site benefits from slightly higher altitude allowing warm days and cool nights to concentrate flavours and ripen tannins without fruit shrivel and loss of acidity. Planted on an ancient river terrace, the soils have a silt top soil overlaying stone mixed with some clay and silt loam allowing good drainage and proving very good at growing a more restrained elegant and aromatic style of Syrah. For the first time they also sourced fruit from the Gimblett Gravels region along SH50. The unique gravel soils here, give power and structure to the wines.