Our Story
Dudley, Irina and Daisy
We live in our vineyard, and we try to make everything on it sustainable, not only the grapes.
The place
Inkwell began in 2003.
Dudley bought 377 California Road, a poorly managed shiraz vineyard in the Tatachilla part of McLaren Vale, and set out to farm it properly.
We change one thing at a time and trial it, because if you change everything at once you never know what made the difference. Do, assess, improve, and go round again.
Today we farm 12 hectares of extraordinary wine grapes between McLaren Vale and the sea, and make the wines here, with one tractor, one electric buggy, one de-stemmer, one press and small fermenters that don’t need artificial cooling or additions.
Along the way
Do, assess, improve.
2003 Dudley buys the vineyard on California Road.
2005 We start fermenting our wines naturally, with indigenous yeasts and no additions or corrections.
2007 Our fruit is earning the highest guaranteed price for Shiraz in the region.
2008 The shift to organic farming is complete.
2009 All our irrigation moves from drinking water to reclaimed water. Irina moves to Australia.
2011 Irina starts making Inkwell’s wine.
2017 Certified organic.
2018 The tasting room and hotel open, built from shipping containers.
2023 Australia’s first Regenerative Organic Certified vineyard.
Dr. Irina Santiago-Brown
Head winemaker and viticulturist.
After more than 15 years in government in Brazil, working on the international relations of the state of Bahia, Irina moved to Australia in 2009 to live and work closer to nature and farming. She completed her Master’s and PhD in Sustainability in Viticulture at the University of Adelaide, and conceptualised, designed and implemented the Sustainable Australia Winegrowing program, which was adapted into the national sustainability system for Australia.
She has made Inkwell’s wine since 2011. In 2015 she was the inaugural Australian Women in Wine Awards Viticulturist of the Year, and in 2018 Wine Enthusiast featured her as one of the world’s Green Leaders.
Dudley Brown
Founder, and forklift driver.
Dudley started Inkwell in 2003 and has been farming and making wine here for more than two decades. It was Dudley, recuperating from a double knee replacement in 2017 and reading a lot, who found the books that changed how we farm. Asked about his most expensive mistake, he says: “Buying a vineyard!”
He also writes The Wine Rules, a blog about the formal and informal rules, the people and the direction of the wine industry. The title is an homage to John Irving’s The Cider House Rules, not any sort of effort at adjudicating wine etiquette.
Daisy
Vineyard supervision.
Daisy is a kelpie and yellow lab cross, and she is often around the tasting room. She has a very busy schedule full of very important meetings and vineyard supervision. If you would like to request an audience, speak to us in the tasting room and we’ll squeeze you in.
Beyond our fence
There is no business without people.
We live in our vineyard. We believe in giving people opportunity, protecting our community and region, and above all in education.
Dudley founded the movement behind the McLaren Vale Character Preservation Acts, which limit urban sprawl into the wine region. He also won the $4 million grant that established the McLaren Vale Mains Water Substitution project: one gigalitre of drinking water saved every year, enough for all of McLaren Vale, and one gigalitre less wastewater going into Gulf St Vincent.
Our business has gender parity. Recently settled refugees from Myanmar have picked our harvest, and in our pruning crew the people over 70 teach the ones just starting. At one stage our main team had someone from every continent.
We’ve raised money to buy generators for burnt-out Kangaroo Island farmers, and donated six tonnes of grapes that helped raise $50,000 for the homeless.
