Exciting News

Hi everyone,

Hope you are all well. It’s been a minute, to be sure. I’ve just come back from the Coonawarra region in SE South Australia, where I was judging at the Limestone Coast Wine Show. I’ve judged at many of the country’s wine shows – from the big capital city shows to the smaller regional ones, and I have to say I think I enjoy the smaller shows more. They are much more community focused, and I really enjoy getting out to these regions and getting to know the people behind the wines. It’s a lot of fun. 

However, this little update is not the reason for this post. I wanted to share with you that my partner Cassie Southwell and I have come to an agreement with our business partners and as of July 1st  we have assumed ownership of the Juxtaposed brand and winery. This is an exciting and scary step for both Cassie and I, but the time was right for everyone involved and we came to a mutually beneficial agreement and the rest is history.

To say we’re excited about all this is an understatement. We feel there is much untapped potential within Juxtaposed and our goal is to continue to push forward, to refine our offerings and find the next gear for quality and interest in our wines, and to continue to source grapes from some of the world’s oldest Grenache and Shiraz vineyards.    

To our former partners, Peter Sommerville and Peter Bolte, we will be forever grateful for the efforts that they put into the business over the years. Without their initiative our wine business would have never got off the ground back in 2011. We had talked about us taking over the business for years, and it was always kind of understood that eventually we would take over. It was just a bit of a shock that it happened so fast! But when opportunity presents itself, you need to embrace it run with it. And that’s what we’ve done.

The other bot of good news is that we were featured in the Weekend Australian last weekend with an article on us by one of Australia’s great wine writers – Nick Ryan, who earlier this year took over the Weekend Australian wine writing duties from the great James Halliday. Nick doesn’t really do wine reviews per se; he is more of a storyteller for the wine industry. So obviously we were very flattered to be the topic of one of his articles.

The article in question is on the Australian website, but unfortunately is behind a paywall. However, if you are lucky enough to have access then here is a link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=TAWEB_WRE170_a_GGL&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2Fweekend-australian-magazine%2Fwhen-art-and-science-combine-great-things-are-made%2Fnews-story%2Fcf1783cbceec6e4064b9a19d39f04e1c&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&v21=GROUPA-Segment-2-NOSCORE&V21spcbehaviour=append

Now of course everyone loves to have good press. That’s a bit of a no brainer. However, this article from Nick is a bit different I think. There are something like 3000 wineries in Australia - there is a lot of noise out there. If you are a small brand like ours – how do you cut through all that noise? Something like this really does that. In the great landscape of Australian wine, we are but a drop in the proverbial bucket, so to have Nick write an article about what we are doing really means something. It legitimizes what we’re trying to do with our wines, and gives us some positive reinforcement that we are on the right track. 

This story conveniently coincides with the release of our newest wines: the 2022 Old Vine Grenache, 2022 Wait Vineyard Shiraz, and the 2023 Lacey Vineyard Fiano. We’ve got a bit of attention for these wines so far – the response has been excellent. We hope you’ll get to try them soon.