The Focus
New Vintage
Three women spinning their own fortunes SARAH ROWLEY ADAMS
From left, Casey Motley, Holly Girven Russell and Hester Nesbitt
IT TAKES pluck to start a wine company in the wake of Covid-19. But three women under 30 have done just that, starting Three Fates Wine in the Hawke’s Bay. The label was forged last year when Holly Gir ven Russell, whose father Gordon is the winemaker at Esk Valley, teamed up with Hester Nesbitt and Casey Motley to lease a hillside vineyard at Maraekākaho. She wanted to create an opportunity for the
trio to create and run their own business “and hopefully inspire others”. Holly grew up seeing the winery as a playground, and school sick days were spent in the car visiting vineyards. She didn’t think she would follow her father’s footsteps, until she graduated from university and found herself working in a call centre, and beginning to assess her life. “I realised that learning about wine was learning about history, art, science, and
flavour - that suited me.” When she moved to London in 2014, Holly worked at the International Wine Show, and then the wine buying team at Marks & Spencer, “which gave me a golden ticket to the wine trade”, she says. “I never looked back”. She returned to the University of Auckland to study winemaking and then began travelling for harvests. Holly had been working in the Yarra Valley when Covid19 hit, so she returned to New
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Zealand with no plans for work. “In isolation, I reached out to the parents of a school friend that I’d heard were looking to step back from their vineyard in Maraekākaho.” They offered a lease on their 1.2 hectare hillside block, but it was more than she could take on alone, so she began to assemble a team. Holly reached out to her friend Hester, who had just returned from an Australian har vest under similar circumstances. Hester had
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NZ WINEGROWER JUNE/JULY 2021