Nick and Rebecca Dugmore Unbottling KI’s potential

‘Since I met him, Nick’s been saying, “I want to make my own wines from Kangaroo Island. And I want the world to know about Kangaroo Island as a wine region”,’ Bec says. ‘But he’d kind of realised he needed to develop himself first.’ To that end, the pair spent the next few years building out their winemaking experience.

WHO WE ARE: Nick and Rebecca Dugmore

In 2008, Nick Dugmore made Kangaroo Island the first stop on his trip around Australia. Six months later, he was still there, surfing, fishing and playing for the local footy team. It was by no means the first time Nick had been to KI, but it’s perhaps when the island really imprinted itself on Nick’s soul. And it’s never let go.

Unbottling KI’s potential

Story by Kate Le Gallez. Photograph by Jason Porter.

Now the winemaker, together with wife Rebecca, is working to introduce the rest of Australia to Kangaroo Island’s wines through their label The Stoke alongside the part-marketing concept, partresearch project, part-love letter that is Guroo Wines.

‘We were figuring it out the other day that we’ve done over thirty vintages between us now,’ says Nick when we sit down to chat over a cup of tea along with Bec and baby Flora (big brother Finlay is at child care). Neither came to winemaking along the traditional trajectory. Nick studied wine marketing at university in Adelaide before picking up vintage work. On the other side of the world, Bec had just finished an MA in history in her native Scotland. She wanted to travel to New Zealand and finding work at an NZ winery seemed a good way to do it.

By the time they met at Amisfield Winery in Central Otago, New Zealand, they’d already chalked up a bunch of vintages and Bec had studied winemaking. Nick’s intentions – wine-wise – were clear from the start. ‘Since I met him, Nick’s been saying, “I want to make my own wines from Kangaroo Island. And I want the world to know about Kangaroo Island as a wine region”,’ Bec says. ‘But he’d kind of realised he needed to develop himself first.’ To that end, the pair spent the next few years building out their winemaking experience. Nick took his turn to study winemaking, while Bec continued working in the industry.

Then came a vintage together in Bordeaux in 2015. Here, with only each other to talk to (neither speaks French) they dreamed up The Stoke. The name speaks to both the place (Stokes Bay is ten minutes from their vineyard) and the spirit (the thrill and the joy of the moment). The next year they dipped a toe, making a sangiovese and a rosé from a two-tonne crush. The wine sold out and they were away. In 2021, with Nick now full-time on The Stoke, they crushed 35 tonnes.

Nick saw their success as a sign of how much the market had changed. Ten years before while working at Kangaroo Island Estate, he’d had to bribe the buyers at East End Cellars with an ice-cream bucket of freshly filleted whiting to take on their wine. ‘Now people are way more comfortable with their drinking. We like to experiment a bit more,’ says Nick. While pescetarian bribes are now unnecessary, Bec and Nick still see awareness raising for KI wines as their main challenge.

One of those key communication challenges is KI’s lack of a go-to variety. Enter Guroo Wines. First released in 2019, the Guroo project is about putting KI grapes into the hands of mainland winemakers. At its heart, it’s a trust exercise. ‘We don’t have the benefit of history on our side, because in a hundred years KI might be known as a premium wine-producing region of South Australia. But at the moment, it’s not, although it’s making some really beautiful wines,’ Nick explains. ‘So we get reputable mainland winemakers (who people trust) to start learning about the region (that we trust),’ Nick explains.

They ask a guru (aka guroo) of a particular variety to work with them over three vintages. The guroo chooses the fruit and Nick and Bec facilitate the relationship between winemaker and grower. All creative control is handed to the guroo, from the pick date forward. Charlotte Hardy of Charlotte Dalton made the first Guroo Wine (a syrah) in 2019 with fruit from False Cape. Since then, they’ve brought in Stephen George of Ashton Hills and Wendouree (making a cab sav and a pinot) and their third guroo is in the wings (Sue Bell of Coonawarra’s Bellwether wines, making chardonnay in 2022).

It’s a well-crafted experiment. By controlling one variable – a winemaker’s talent for working with a particular variety – they can find out what KI grapes can really do. And it starts to build the trust bridge between KI wine and consumer.

Thirteen years on from the shortest ever trip around Australia, Nick and Bec have started a new Kangaroo Island adventure. And this time, we’re all invited to come along for the ride.