Cate & Nick Foskett
SINGING A DIFFERENT TUNE
Viticulturist and opera singer Cate Foskett traded in her fast-paced London life for a slower existence in the Adelaide Hills, where she and her husband Nick craft cool-climate wines that sing.
After 12 years in London as an opera singer, Cate was ready for a change. She and her husband Nick, who worked in IT, planned to move somewhere quiet and rural, where they could have a view and a vegetable garden. They ended up with both those things – and a lot more than they’d bargained for. These days the pair run a successful wine label, making some unique wines from a rare grape and treating cellar door visitors to an occasional opera performance.
Hitting a high note
In “a fit of madness”, Cate and Nick – who knew next to nothing about winemaking – bought a premium commercial vineyard in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills wine region. They then promptly went back to university to get the skills they needed to make it work.
That was 2011, and today the couple are producing acclaimed wines under their label Top Note – which references both wine aromas and the highest singing note. Nick makes the wine, living out a long-held ambition, while Cate gets her hands dirty managing the vineyard.
Cate says the harvest is very much like putting on an opera. You are striving for a performance.
“I’m surprised by how much I love the viticulture side,” she says. “There’s something really fulfilling about taking a crop from budburst all the way through to the final pick and then tasting the resulting wine a year or so later.”
Cate and Nick grow a handful of different varieties that thrive in the Adelaide Hills’ cool climate, including Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and the rare Red Semillon. This unusual mutation of Semillon produces grapes with red skin, and the couple put it to good use, crafting a crisp table wine and a delicate dessert wine.
They sell some of their fruit to premium Australian wineries, and carefully select and hand-pick their best grapes to produce small batches of elegant wine using as little intervention as possible.
“Our only philosophy is to let the vineyard speak for us,” says Cate. “We want the wine to reflect the season and the vintage that we had.”
Cate still works as an opera singer between harvests, and sometimes dazzles cellar door guests with an impromptu performance, but could never return to the fast pace of city life.
“This vineyard has given me an amazing sense of peace,” says Cate. “Sitting in the tractor, slashing six kilometres an hour for hours is just magic. It’s like meditation. I love it here.”
“Our only philosophy is to let the vineyard speak for us. We want the wine to reflect the season and the vintage that we had.” – Cate Foskett
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