Sailor Seeks Horse

While I (James) was given comprehensive information about Paul and Gilli Lipscombe and their vineyard, I am none the wiser about the highly unusual and very catchy name. The story began in '05 when they resigned from their (unspecified) jobs in London, did a vintage in Languedoc and then headed to Margaret River to study oenology and viticulture. They worked in large, small, biodynamic, conventional, minimum- and maximum-intervention vineyards and wineries – Woodlands, Xanadu, Beaux Freres, Chehalem and Mt Difficulty, all household names. By ’10 they were in Tasmania working for Julian Alcorso’s Winemaking Tasmania (now Tasmanian Vintners) and found a derelict vineyard that had never cropped, having been abandoned not long after being planted in ’05. It was in the Huon Valley, precisely where they had aimed to begin – the coolest district in Tasmania. -JAMES HALLIDAY