Wine’s Complexity - Nick Dugmore of The Stoke

I heard a great quote that went something like this: when you’re a child, you think your parents are gods. When you become an adolescent, you realize they’re human. When you become an adult, you forgive them for being human. When you become wise, you forgive yourself for being human.

My guest for this episode is Nick Dugmore. Nick is a winemaker in South Australia for his winery The Stoke. Nick listened to the episode I recorded with Jeff Lowenfels about the soil microbiome, and he’s been traveling down the regenerative viticulture rabbit hole ever since. In 2023 he was named Australia’s Young Gun of Wine, and then four months ago he was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer. He’s 39 years old.

When you hear Nick’s positivity, humor, and joy, keep in mind that he’s in the midst of the following treatment schedule: 5 x 3 week rounds of chemotherapy with 1 week of intravenous followed by 112 tablets over two weeks and then a week break. Then 6 weeks of radiotherapy which is 5 days a week at the hospital for 45 mins. Then a 3 month break and then surgery to remove what’s left. 

We talk frankly about his cancer and the fact that his alcohol consumption may have contributed to it. Yet Nick is incredibly grateful to work in wine, and he loves the winemaking community. Both Nick and I can thank wine for the most important relationships in our lives – our spouses. But if his cancer was caused by alcohol, there’s a chance that alcohol could take his life. Both are parts of wine, and there are many more. Nick talks about the wine community that has come to his aid, and he talks about the spirituality of wine, and the beauty of Kangaroo Island where he converted 12 acres of conventional vineyard to a thriving regenerative ecosystem. He makes some profound connections between soil health, physical health, and mental health. And at least twice he mentions how busy we all are, and how this leads us to make thoughtless decisions… because we don’t have the time to be thoughtful.

It reminds me of the famous quote from Bill Mollison’s Permaculture Designers Manual: "The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature, of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action."

As I think about regenerating wine, Nick has made me think about how important time is. The speed of our lives is completely antithetical to the complexity of life. Look how patiently nature grows an ecosystem, look how it builds complexity and diversity layer by layer over centuries. I want to make wine this way. I want to think about wine this way, and let this perspective inform the decisions I make for this vintage. I want to stop rushing to buy things when I don’t know where they came from or how they were made. I want to take the time to observe and learn about complex things carefully. I want to take the time to be grateful.

If you’re moved by Nick’s story, he mentions a go-fund me campaign that his wine community set up for him and his family, and you can link to that here.

https://stokewines.au/

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Centralas Wine