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Blair and Caroline Guthrie are making honest wines, farmed responsibly. Their baby side project (only 600 cases a year) is filled with so much love – their wines are comforting and light-hearted as a Sunday morning dance party in your bathrobe. Beneath that, they are strongly focused on preserving and encouraging the good in the world – environmentally, ethically and everything in between.

So much of our approach to wine has been inspired by Pieter Walser and his BLANKbottle wines – where the bottles typically don’t show the varietal to avoid any preconceived ideas about what people think they like and don’t like when it comes to wines. “You can’t judge it by the label; it takes drinking a whole bottle to get to know the wine.” He also designs those labels.

Just unpacking the name of the brand gives you a sense of how proprietors Martin & Welma Smith view the world. Atlas, the titan of perseverance, tasked with holding up the sky represents how very seriously they take their commitment to protecting the lands on which they grow their grapes. It also speaks to the maps on which the terroirs they work with are laid out. Swifts, one of the fastest and most aerial of the bird species, represents their nimble exploration to find said terroirs. The project, which on the surface, focuses on site-specific Chardonnays from distinctive places scattered across the Western Cape of South Africa, carries with it so much more than just beautiful wines of exceptional texture (Martin is the KING of texture! – Cami). It carries with it the dreams of some of the most authentic souls we have the pleasure to know.

A tale as old as time, women in wine baby! Matilde Poggi’s first harvest, on her family-owned 15th-century farmhouse, happened in 1984. She worked tirelessly at a time when large, quantity-driven firms and cooperatives dominated local production. Rather than following the masses, Matilde chose to concentrate on quality, revamping her vineyards to better express the area’s native grapes. Today, she is one of Italy’s most respected producers, and, in 2013 was elected President of the Federazione Italiana Vignaioli Indipendenti (Italian Federation of Independent Grape Growers or FIVI). More recently, she became the first Italian and first female president of the European equivalent, the European Confederation of Independent Winegrowers (CEVI).

Matilde has three daughters, to whom she’d like to pass on Le Fraghe one day (but we’re volunteering in case her girls don’t want it – wanna come?).

The two cuties in charge of bringing the world Bodegas Frontonio are the perfect mish-mash of dreamers, drinkers and doers. They really are an exciting and very welcomed addition to the organic wine movement in and around their precious Valdejalón vineyard. Their values align with ours in that they understand that rules are meant to be broken, but before you break anything, make sure that your foundation is strong and that you respect the folk who came before you.

Jolette Steyn is a super international wine sales lady by day, planning Vineyard Parties on the side. She has 15 harvests under her belt and quit her winemaking day job to take a gamble on making the kinds of wine she, as a self-proclaimed wine geek, truly loves. The Vineyard Party aims to bring some of South Africa’s lesser-known varietals to the forefront by exploring the Cape’s vineyards in search of biodiverse, sustainably farmed vineyards with happy soils, people and vines. This is the maiden release and quantities are super limited!

The two wines, I’m Your Huckleberry (or Huck, as we like to call it) and Here be Dragons are harvested from the same vineyard on the same day. Split into 3 batches and fermented in different, avant-garde and low intervention ways. Each one includes 2 different components of the 3 techniques.

We know Radford Dale winemaker & managing partner, Jacques de Klerk from his beautiful Reverie wines. Radford Dale began in 1998 when Alex Dale and Ben Radford decided to not just drink wines together but make them too. Since the beginning, they’ve focused on a light-handed, lower-intervention approach. The Thirst range is the live rock show to the studio albums of the rest of their wines – a little more edge, a little more fun and a whole lot of wanting to take another sip!

What happens when you hire a viticulturist from Penfolds and give him a sheep farm? He hires an ex-accountant studying wine and sets about planting vineyards destined for making some of the world’s best Pinot Noir (seriously, they’ve won an award) in less than 2 decades. Named after the unique limestone soils, a mix of fossils, seashells and small pebbles that have been fused together through the seismic movement of North Canterbury, Greystone has made big waves in the wine world under the stewardship of viticulturist & GM, Nick Gill and winemaker, Dom Maxwell.

Blair and Caroline Guthrie are making honest wines, farmed responsibly. Their baby side project (only 600 cases a year) is filled with so much love – their wines are comforting and lighthearted as a Sunday morning dance party in your bathrobe. Beneath that, they are strongly focused on preserving and encouraging the good in the world – environmentally, ethically and everything in between.

This tiny operation, started in 2007 by the spirited Sardinian Antonio Berritta, operates out of the basement of a grocery store. Antonio, his wife Maria Paola and their kids, Serena and Francesco are all involved in the operations of the winery – under the meticulous direction of the grandkids. Antonio’s family has been cultivating olives and vines using traditional methods for generations. This stuff really is in their blood!

The story of Ottomani began with four friends who grew up together and turned a dream into reality. Not that far off from us girls at Crushed!

They graduated from the University of Florence with Oenology (that’s the science of wine) degrees and chose to separate for a while to get some exposure working in real wineries. With a few years of experience and some real savoir-faire in their back pockets, the boys came back together and purchased a farm of their own. In 2006, Ottomani was born with indigenous grape preservation and sustainability sowed into its mission statement.

The very first winery in the Southern Hemisphere to farm using biodynamic practices, James and Annie Millton have stayed true to their practice since establishing The Millton Vineyard in 1984. Truly experimental, Libiamo represents the next generation of the Millton family, taking the reins and looking toward something that is completely un-manipulated and doesn’t leave a debt or burden on the planet.

Humble, hardworking and patient – hallmarks of the donkey, and according to Francesco Follador, the winegrower as well. Stubbornness is another. Francesco holds tradition and heritage extremely close to his heart, refusing to take the easy road on anything – from the location his of vineyards on hard-to-farm hills, to insisting on growing much less popular native grapes. All in the name of being true to what he strongly believes is the best the region can produce and preserving the deep heritage of Valdobbiadene. It’s because he shares so many of these qualities with the donkey, that he chose it as his logo. To quote his website, “Yes, we are donkeys and we are proud of it”.

Yes! We love feedback! Let us know what you loved, hated or if you want to mix things up and we’ll make sure to adjust for your next case.

Hubby to the ‘H’ in pH, is but one of many monikers for Thinus Krüger – cowboy, maverick, rock star are just a few of the others. Big hair, big moustache, big ideas and big adventures are the hallmarks of his pioneering project, named after a Norwegian ship that attempted to sail to both the North & South Poles. He’s headed to the edges of the winemaking map to find what vineyards lie over the next horizon, resulting in audacious and unusual wines that make the world feel like the good place it should be.

Blair and Caroline Guthrie are making honest wines, farmed responsibly. Their baby side project (only 600 cases a year) is filled with so much love – their wines are comforting and lighthearted as a Sunday morning dance party in your bathrobe. Beneath that, they are strongly focused on preserving and encouraging the good in the world – environmentally, ethically and everything in between.