New Zealand sees the sun before almost anyone else in the world. Every morning, before the light, the birds wake up and start singing – the dawn chorus, waraki. In the right patch of bush it’s close to deafening. Nothing sounds or feels quite like it. It’s unique to us and to New Zealand, which is how we landed on the name for our wines, Dawn Chorus.

Made from grapes grown in Hawke’s Bay, on the East Coast of Aotearoa New Zealand, where the land means as much to us as the wine we put in the bottle.

The vineyard is certified organic and sits about 20 miles from the sea, at the foot of limestone hills that were pushed up out of the ocean. Forty-five thousand years ago a river flooded across this valley floor. Before that – earlier and deeper – the whole area was a salt lake, left behind as the land lifted out of the sea.

The sea water is long gone. The salt isn’t. The soils are shallow river silts over greywacke stone, with deep, slightly saline sub-soils underneath. Add a cool climate with not much rain and you get grapes with moderate sugar, proper acidity and plenty to say for themselves. The Sauvignon Blanc and the Chardonnay come from here.

The Rosé comes from a younger block closer to the coast – sandy, fast-draining riverbed soils the river left only a few hundred years ago.