Burn Cottage

The Free Bacchus Story

The property was a deer farm before it was a vineyard. When the Sauvage family bought it in 2002 they planted vines on land that had never carried them, which meant the biodynamic system could be designed into the site rather than retrofitted onto an existing one.

Ted Lemon of Littorai consulted on the project from the start, bringing the Burgundian approach he had trained in. BioGro organic certification followed in 2014; the biodynamic practice dates from inception.

The Sauvage family are cotton and wheat growers from Oberlin, Kansas. They arrived in Central Otago already knowing what a farm is, and Ted Lemon proposed farming the whole estate biodynamically at the first planning conversation, before a single vine went in.

Decanter has awarded Gold. Central Otago is the southernmost wine region in the world, and its Pinot Noir gets its structure from a short growing season and an enormous day-to-night temperature swing rather than from heat.

Starting clean is easier than getting clean. Very few estates get the option, and it shows in how quickly the soil work here matured.