-COLERE-

Wine writer Dr Jo Burzynska top 50 selection of New Zealand’s most thrilling wineries for 2023

"micro-negociant Colere sources fruit from some of the most interesting certified organic/biodynamic vineyards in Marlborough. Made with a light touch these wines authentically reflect these special sites".

Colere (‘cultivate and worship land and spirit') is a micro-negotiant wine project seeking out small unique parcels of the highest quality certified organic/biodynamic grapes, from some of New Zealand’s leading wine growing sites and farmers.

Fermentation and experimentation, like fire and simple tools, are some the most basic transformative processes that we can use in life that for the basis of human culture. This culture begins at the farm and binds a people to its land and to its artisans. This requires first and foremost that we enter into an alchemical relationship with bacteria and fungi, and that we bring to our tables food and wine prepared by the magicians, not machines.

With this in mind the wines of Colere are very much cultivated, no less than plants and animals are cultivated, and for that matter no less than other products of human work and thought. My thoughts are that life is a rhythmic force. There is no better time to witness this than spring and summer, the time of awakening, as buds burst, plants utilize the power of the sun to expand, renew and reclaim. I feel these pulses through the seasons can be tenderly captured in an intelligent wine, a wine complimented by a reverence and respect for the natural growing rhythms, the pulse of a vines expansion to leaf and contraction to seed. At harvest, the living shift once again with the transformative explosion of life during fermentation, and then the settling and calming during biological stabilization, the tender raising of the wines during assemblage before their passage to bottle. And finally patiently resting/aging before the final journey to your glass…

Really, it’s all about the glass of wine at the end of the day.