The geography of a wine career that began with Monday night Uni drinks and motors onwards and upwards making great booze with fun, flavour, and a splash of funk!
Back in 1995, Matt Gant was in his final year of a Geography degree at Royal Holloway, University of London. As luck would have it, Matt’s lecturer was the wine-fanatical Dr Tim Unwin, who contrived a course called ‘The Historical Geography of Viticulture’. The course included a weekly ‘wine tasting’ and culminated in a field trip to Burgundy and Champagne, with amazing tastings every day.
That was the end of Matt’s degree, and he scored a vintage job in New Zealand, followed by vintages in Spain, Italy, Portugal, the US and Australia – where he discovered the Barossa Valley, and hasn’t looked back.
Ten years after it all began, Matt and partner in crime John Retsas set up First Drop Wines in 2005, with a lifelong commitment to making stellar-quality booze and showing the rest of the world how much excitement the next generation of Australian wine has to offer.