The Hidden Life of Vineyards - with Dylan Grigg

Wine is full of simple stories.

Old vines are better than young vines. Great vineyards are all about terroir. Climate determines quality. Pick the right variety, put it in the right place, and the rest takes care of itself.

They're neat stories. They're marketable stories.

According to this week's guest, they're also dangerously incomplete.

Dylan Grigg is one of the most respected viticulturists in Australia. He's a consultant, researcher, vineyard owner, international speaker, former Australian Viticulturist of the Year, and a man whose work takes him from the Barossa Valley to Tasmania, Western Australia, California, Spain and beyond.

In this conversation, we explore the extraordinary complexity that exists beneath the surface of every vineyard. We discuss old vines, epigenetics, vine memory, climate variability, regenerative viticulture, and why so many of the questions wine lovers ask can never be answered with a simple yes or no.

We unpack Dylan's remarkable journey from a young apprentice chef in the Barossa to earning a PhD, before relocating his family to Catalonia and building an international reputation as one of the wine industry's most respected vineyard minds.

Along the way, Dylan explains why vineyards aren't spreadsheets, why experience matters as much as science, and why the best viticulturists often spend their lives becoming more comfortable with uncertainty rather than less.

This is my conversation with Dylan Grigg. A huge thanks to Dylan for joining me