Andries Mostert and Yoko Lüscher Mostert are a little unconventional, just like their wine label – Brave New Wine.
Using experimental winemaking techniques and some artistic flare, the husband and wife duo make some of the South West’s most glugable small batch wines.
“The best way to describe our wine is that we use ‘minimal intervention’,” Yoko says. “We don’t do any fining or filtration and if we don’t have to use sulphate we won’t use it, because we feel our wine has a bit more vitality, freshness and life about them without it.”
It’s a natural approach that Andries and Yoko have been practising since 2013, when their Brave New Wine journey began.
“It was a bit of a creative outlet to start with,” Yoko explains. “It wasn’t meant to be our soul income or business as such, but Andries (a winemaker by trade) was made redundant twice in 18 months. Keen to stay in Denmark and raise our family here, we made Brave New Wine our fulltime gig.”
Two and a half years on, and Andries and Yoko have almost doubled their wine production. It’s not a bad feat for the couple, who work from home to bring their experimental wines to life.
“Our office is basically our kitchen table,” Yoko says. “Andries is the winemaker – he does all the heavy lifting – and I do all the marketing, social media and paint the labels on all of our wine.”
Yep, Yoko actually paints a label for each of Brave New Wine’s vintages, including their Dreamland riesling – a botanical wine infused with native bush herbs.
“There’s a bush food factory down the road from us, so we go and visit them and gather what resembles a giant teabag of native bush herbs and spices and we introduce that to the barrels during ferment,” Yoko says. “I find the bush flavours really complement those natural riesling characters and just add a bit of complexity to the wine.”
Complex in taste and in nature, no two bottles of Brave New Wine are the same, but that’s just the way Andries, Yoko and their lo-fi wine fans like it.
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@bravenewwine, Bravenewwine.com.au