Collection: Black Estate

Black Estate is a biodynamic estate in North Canterbury’s Waipara Valley, where land, family, and living soils shape wines of quiet strength and elemental clarity. Owned and operated by Nicholas and Penelope Brown and Nicholas’s brother-in-law Dion Driver, Black Estate is a deeply personal project — one grounded in heritage and propelled by a commitment to honest farming and expressive, low-intervention winemaking. Every wine is grown, not made — a reflection of place, season, and the slow, silent movement of vine and time.

The estate farms three distinct vineyards: Home, Damsteep, and Netherwood — each organically and biodynamically certified, and each offering a unique soil composition, aspect, and microclimate. Clay, limestone, sandstone, and ancient seabed silt underpin the vines, yielding fruit with natural tension, phenolic detail, and inner luminosity. Farming is regenerative and deeply connected — cover crops, composts, and biodiversity are not strategies but an ethic, and every decision begins in the vineyard.

Winemaking is minimal and intuitive. Fermentations are wild. No additions are made apart from a minimal dose of sulphur when needed. Red wines — particularly Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc — are fermented in small open-top vessels with gentle extraction and aged in neutral oak. Whites, including Chardonnay, Chenins Blanc, Riesling, and skin-fermented expressions, are pressed long and slow, fermented in a mix of barrels and amphorae, and left untouched to evolve on lees.

The wines are textured, living, and quietly expressive. Pinot Noir is savoury and finely structured — wild berry, herb, and limestone energy stitched into a taut, mineral line. Chardonnay is chalky and saline, with orchard fruit, flint, and fine phenolics. Riesling is electric, with citrus peel, wet stone, and dry precision. Cabernet Franc shows a lifted, herbal edge over clay-driven depth. Skin-fermented whites bring structure and grip — wines of movement, not control. Across the range, the wines reflect not a style, but a way of being.

What defines Black Estate is its devotion to presence — a producer that listens deeply to soil and season, and bottles what it hears without correction or adornment.

These are wines that carry breath and soil in equal measure — meditative, untamed, and drawn straight from the living fabric of the land.