Kiven’s path to winemaking began when he signed up for viticulture electives as an undergraduate finance student at Melbourne University. Finance work took him from his home town to Sydney, and from Sydney to New York City to work as a financier on Wall Street – but the call of working in wine soon saw him throw in the Gordon Gekko lifestyle and move to the village of Lauris, Provence, to work with Xavier Balespouey of Domaine de Fontenille.
“I always struggled with the concept of sitting behind a desk 50 to 60 hours a week for the rest of my life,” Kiven says. “Making wine and working in vineyards gives me a strong sense of purpose, a deep yearning to learn, and a platform to travel and live in the most beautiful places around the world.”
Unlike many in the world of wine, Kiven doesn’t come from a winemaking family, or even a wine-drinking one. “Wine, or any alcohol for that matter, was never really present at our dinner table growing up,” he says. Instead, he credits the viticulture electives he took at university for igniting his interest in wine. “Viticulture drew me to wine, rather than the other way around,” he adds. “Something about working in vineyards felt so innate and instinctive, and is something that I hope plays a big part in the future of my label.”
Learning from Balespouey has given Kiven a fairly traditionalist mindset when it comes to how he approaches his work in the cellar. “My wines tend to be more serious and made with a level of resolve.” he says. “And while there is a trend to be hyper-experimental in the younger generation of winemakers … what drew me to wine in the beginning was the tradition, and the tradition of making a wine to be drunk years into the future – which, once opened, is able to communicate the story, the site, the year, the challenges, all from that very vintage. This is what made me fall in love with the craft.”
“I was never in awe of shiny new stainless-steel machines, high tech optical graders, or inert pneumatic presses. As clichéd as it sounds, the appeal to me was the 75-year-old Frenchman who had been making wine with his bare hands the way his father taught him, and his father before him.”
Unorthodox wine experiments may be out, but that doesn’t mean that Kiven is opposed to a bit of science in winemaking. “I’d like to say my process is driven by instinct and gut-feel,” he says, “[but] having spent countless hours buried in financial models and spreadsheets I am very data-focused, and the pragmatic side of me needs to always have the supporting science before making key decisions.”
Not that the rational side of Kiven’s approach sees him investing in winery technology, or pitching in additives to achieve his desired results. “I was never in awe of shiny new stainless-steel machines, high tech optical graders, or inert pneumatic presses,” he says. “As clichéd as it sounds, the appeal to me was the 75-year-old Frenchman who had been making wine with his bare hands the way his father taught him, and his father before him. While I’m not pursuing anything particularly unique, what I am pursuing is wine that contains that fourth dimension – which I believe only exists in wines made in smaller quantities, very hands-on, and with serious intention.”
Kiven takes ‘hands-on’ as a concept very seriously. “Everything in my winemaking process is done by hand,” he says, “which, for better or for worse, adds an artisanal dimension.” Without a family background in wine, his operation is necessarily small and lean. “Being a lone wolf in this game can be difficult at times,” he says. “The label is me – I have nothing to hide behind, and need to be accountable for every single decision … Producing something with your bare hands that takes you over two years to finish and then seeing someone thoroughly enjoy it is one of the warmest feelings you can have. Every year I want to become better, I want my wines to become more distinguished, I want to grow.”
“The label is me – I have nothing to hide behind, and need to be accountable for every single decision.”
This ‘hard-mode’ approach to winemaking starts at harvest, when Kiven takes on fruit from the organic and/or sustainable vineyards he purchases from. “I am out there with the picking crew, at first light, handpicking every bunch that enters my winery,” Kiven says. “Every single bunch is manually fed through the destemmer and sorted on its way through. My ferments are attended to four times per day, every day.” He proudly disdains the idea of ‘minimal intervention’ in the cellar. “I’d say my winemaking philosophy is entirely opposite,” he says. “I’m always feeling, smelling, analysing every single day through harvest and the ageing process.” Despite this work in the cellar, the finished wines would sit comfortably under all but the most doctrinaire definition of natural wine. “My wines are not filtered, nor fined, and no additions are made except for sulphur,” he adds. “A very small amount at the crush, after malolactic in the spring, and just prior to bottling.”
The big challenge for Kiven is getting perfectly ripe fruit from his cool-climate vineyard sources, with the extended hang time increasing weather risks. “It has been difficult at times to hold my nerve,” he admits. “The weather during harvest in the last few years has been exceptionally volatile, leading to a constant mind-battle of waiting for phenolic ripeness while observing the vine canopy degrade. This has led to me picking earlier than I would have liked and as such, doing a little bit more work in the cellar. Fortunately, after spending some time making wine in Slovenia (where this issue is common-place) you learn some techniques – particularly around the use of lees.” He finds the extra work worthwhile: “The savoury characters in wine, the intense aromatic profile, and the complexity you see from extended hang-time are just a few reasons why I love working in the areas I do.”
Given that viticulture was Kiven’s springboard into winemaking, it’s perhaps unsurprising that his long-term ambitions include vineyard ownership. “The dream has always been, and will always be to have a vineyard of my own, growing varieties that I love that perhaps are lesser-known,” he says. In the interim, he’ll keep making wine the same way he has for the past few years – micro-scale, hands-on, an indefatigable one-man band who doesn’t mind putting in the hard yards. “While I never want to consistently produce the same wines,” he says, “I hope I can consistently find that fourth dimension.”
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