What have been the biggest challenges this year for Minimum Wines?

It’s a crazy thing but this year, our launch year, one of the strangest and hardest in many of our memories, has also been incredibly successful. We have been so incredibly humbled by the support for our new business and despite bar and restaurant closures, we were already set up to sell online plus we have had incredible support in bottle shops, and things have really taken off. We’re not sure if everyone is just really drunk at home or they are stockpiling all the good things, but whatever the reason, we are so grateful that people want our organic wines in their glasses and with lockdown finally lifting in our Melbourne hood we are excited for the massive sigh of relief (and party) that’s coming.

What’s surprised you most about yourselves this year?

We have lived a little hermit-like for some time ha ha and through the years we were focussed on Grown & Gathered, living isolated on our little farm in rural Vic felt a lot like lockdown. But what surprised us most about pandemic-life was that being isolated in a rural area in the middle of an actual lockdown really amplified that sense of isolation immensely. It has made us so much more grateful for what we have and what facilities do exist in our rural area normally. And it has reminded us of how amazing our good friends are and reinforced the need to keep in touch despite long distances between us in many cases. We are surprised we have so natively moved over to Zoom life! But again, that whole phenomenon has just made us even more grateful for real face-to-face catch-ups and real human touch also! So I guess the clearest answer to this question is that we are surprised we could ever have taken all the amazing things in our life for granted before. More than ever before, we are focussing on appreciating what we’ve got.

How are you both and your families?

We are all well thank-you. No one very close to us has been ill. No one was affected by the fires. We all feel very lucky for the 2020 we’ve been gifted amongst all of this chaos. We hope and wish for everyone out there that has been smashed by 2020 all the good things for the rest of the year and the next many years to come. This has been one big shit show and we work with so many incredible hospo businesses that have always supported us. We will continue to support them as much as we can and continue to make accessible good wine that’s good for the planet. We have a lot of faith that this tough time will lead to lots of beautiful changes in the future and we are choosing to collaborate, not compete, as we all enter this next stage.

Minimum Wines