Meet Emily C Kinsman

Up until 2019, I was a Collins Street lawyer, having grown up in the leafy streets of inner eastern Melbourne. It was a good life — but not quite the right one.

I've always needed to make things. There is no greater pleasure for me than watching someone enjoy something I've created. Growing up, I made my own clothes — a kind of moving meditation. I found joy in cooking, in hosting, in laying a table and sharing something of myself with the people around it. It wasn't until I moved to the Macedon Ranges in 2016 that a new idea began to take shape: what if I could make a life from the land itself?

In 2019, I stepped off the V-Line for the last time and started my first vintage as Assistant Winemaker at Hanging Rock Winery. By then, I'd already taken on a small Shiraz vineyard in central Heathcote, on the northern banks of Lake Eppalock — a site I farm organically, and largely by hand. Hand weeding, hand mowing, hand pruning, hand netting, hand picking. It is slow, physical, humbling work, and I wouldn't trade it.

In October 2024, I took over the stewardship of a five-acre high-density site in the Macedon Ranges — Pinot Noir and Gewürztraminer planted in 1987, at 800 metres above sea level, with narrow rows and vines spaced just half a metre apart. It is one of the most special parcels of land I've ever set foot on. Driving up and down those rows in my old Same Frutetto tractor is, without question, one of my favourite things in the world.

In between, I spent five weeks in the Northern Rhône — working with a small, family-run winery near Tain l'Hermitage, making wines from Cornas, Saint-Joseph and Crozes-Hermitage. It was humbling and eye-opening in equal measure. What struck me most wasn't the technique — it was the way of thinking. The quiet attentiveness to place and season. Each wine made with a clear sense of purpose, shaped by careful hands in the vineyard long before it ever reached the cellar. I came home seeing everything a little differently.

These wines are full of love, hope, and a fair side of back-breaking labour. I hope you enjoy drinking them as much as I've enjoyed making them.