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 wines is an old mustering hut in the remote hills between the Wairau and Awatere Valleys. The 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.

A variety with plenty of nominations for the title of ‘greatest white grape variety in the world‘, Riesling has however, despite the wine trade‘s love affair with this grape, failed to capture the affection of the wine-drinking public outside its homeland in the same way as Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc. Its inimitable, unique flavour is hard to describe and takes time to appreciate, however, few varieties have its capacity to reflect the land in which they‘re grown along with its own distinctive character, visible decades after bottling. Full of limey, green-apple fruit in its heartland of Germany and lean citrus notes in the Clare Valley in Australia, with the unmistakeable ‘kerosene‘ note in warmer climates, it is capable of greatness whether bone-dry, zestily off-dry or lusciously sweet.