A Colorado native, Ashby came to wine via literature, with a Bachelor of Arts focusing on creative writing that led to him to pursuing a career in wine journalism and marketing. That work took him first to Singapore and Cambodia, then to New Zealand, where the pen was temporarily pocketed in the interests of getting some hands-on experience. As Ashby puts it, “One day, entirely by mistake, I found myself working in a vineyard and winery in New Zealand.” That was at Cambridge Road, in Martinborough, and that pen largely stayed pocketed from then on. Ashby soon racked up vintage experience around the world, including in the Adelaide Hills and Great Southern, as well as back home at Soter in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, before starting Gatch Wine in 2016.
Gatch soon expanded to encompass a collaboration with Adelaide brewery Little Bang, with Ashby making Little Bang’s line of wines in-house and moving the production of Gatch to Little Bang’s facilities. Here Ashby let the craft beer ethos of constant experimentation drive Gatch – until, as he puts it, “COVID steamrolled it.” Ashby is philosophical about the loss of his first label: “It forced me to step back and look at what the wine landscape in Australia was [and] is,” he says. “How can I be true to myself? Make wines that I care about, but still be relevant to consumers and the trade? What has Australia done well? Done poorly? And then taking all that experience, and trying to create something meaningful out of that.”
The result of that reflection is an almost complete 180-degree turn in thinking as a winemaker. Where Gatch was all about restless experimentation and a desire to craft approachable, easy drinking wines without regard to region or variety, Ashby says that he started Pare “with two simple ideas: wine should reflect its origin, and the best fruit produces the best wine. In addition, focus and intent lead to better outcomes.” In order to best reflect their origins, all of Pare’s wines are single-vineyard products; in order to provide that focus and intent, Ashby works only with grenache and chardonnay, “two varieties suited to South Australia, specifically the Adelaide Hills and McLaren Vale.”
“I think the best way to express a specific site is to try and manipulate the wine as little as possible, within reason.”
The result is a series of wines that let site speak over winemaker. “Australia has always excelled at promoting brand or winemaker,” Ashby says. “Pare is not the first to highlight vineyard, but we want [it to be] the single focus of the brand. As such, all wines are labelled by vineyard and vineyard only.” Winemaking follows suit: “I think the best way to express a specific site is to try and manipulate the wine as little as possible, within reason,” he adds.
That ‘within reason’ is telling. If Ashby’s experience with Gatch has taught him anything, it’s that it doesn’t pay to be doctrinaire. “I’m not prescriptivist in my winemaking. I think for every ‘rule’ in winemaking, there’s going to be an exception that’s just as important,” he says. “I try to use whatever techniques or processes are suitable to the style of wine I’m making.”
Pare’s grenaches are fermented and aged in large-format (500 L) neutral oak, with no additions until just before bottling, where they see a pinch of sulphur. “The large format helps protect the wine from oxidation during maturation, which lets us get away without using SO₂. Grenache also does not need new oak – it’s plenty spicy by itself.” Chardonnay, by contrast, “arguably requires the most ‘winemaking’ – new oak, battonage, malolactic fermentation,” he says. The wine is raised in small-format new French barriques, with sulphur added after malolactic conversion. “The SO₂ helps protect against oxidation, a much greater concern in the smaller barrels, and the new oak adds both complexity and weight to the finished wine.” Despite the significant differences between winemaking approaches for these different varieties, Ashby sees an underlying philosophical connection: “I just want to make the best wine I can, given the circumstances and the fruit that I’m working with … It’s really not about a massive stuff-up or sudden ‘Eureka!’ moment – it’s making lots of small adjustments and trying to improve a little bit every step of the way.”
“We have to acknowledge the changes to the consumer landscape. People, myself included, are much more conscious of what they’re putting into their bodies, how it was made, how it impacts the world.”
If Ashby has his way, there’ll be more fruit to work with in the near future. “I would really love to be making five to six single vineyard wines for each variety,” he says. “These wines would come from across different sub-regions in the Adelaide Hills and McLaren Vale. Ideally, we’d have some combination of single vineyard wines from Picadilly, Lenswood, Kenton Valley, Forreston, Kuitpo, et cetera in the Hills and the same again in McLaren Vale, but with Blewitt Springs, Clarendon, Kangarilla, Seaview, Whites Valley, et cetera.” Ashby’s mission is to drill down on what makes subregions distinct: “What makes Clarendon different to Blewitt? To Kangarilla? Or Lenswood different to Kenton Valley? Kuitpo? These styles of wines are much more suited to expressing sub-regional differences and single sites. Let’s keep exploring that.”
Ashby sees his own pivot on the subject of regions and vineyards as part of a broader trend in Australian wine. “We have to acknowledge the changes to the consumer landscape,” he says. “People, myself included, are much more conscious of what they’re putting into their bodies, how it was made, how it impacts the world. I want to make wine that people are proud to show their friends and family, not something that was on special for $20 at Dan’s … That means telling the story of the farmers, the growers. That means being honest in the packaging and how it was made.” Peel back all the marketing puffery and winemaking ego and you’re left only with a kind of radical honesty – and that’s what Pare’s about.
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