Before they made wine, Gareth and Rainbo Belton studied seaweed. Both earned PhDs in phycology, the science of marine plants, before turning their fascination with biodiversity toward the soils of the Adelaide Hills. Gentle Folk is the result, a small family winery on Peramangk Country in Basket Range that has become one of Australia's most quietly admired natural wine producers.
Backstory
Gareth Belton began Gentle Folk with the 2013 vintage, making just three barrels of wine from a Basket Range vineyard. He had been drawn into wine by the Adelaide Hills natural wine community and was inspired by pioneers such as Anton van Klopper, James Erskine and Tom Shobbrook. The project has since grown to between six and seven thousand cases a year, still run as a family operation with a handful of staff.
The Region
Gentle Folk is based in Basket Range, in the high, cool country of the Adelaide Hills in South Australia. The Beltons farm around eight hectares across five sites in Basket Range, Norton Summit, Summertown and Ashton, an area of steep, beautiful terrain and varied microclimates that lends their wines freshness and detail.
Vineyards and Farming
The estate works to organic and biodynamic principles across its sites, which are planted to Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc. Increasingly the focus is on expressing the individual character of each vineyard they tend rather than blending across them.
Winemaking
Gentle Folk sits firmly in the natural wine sphere. Whites are often given extended skin contact and reds see whole bunch fermentation, with the only addition being a little sulphur, and not always. The wines buck convention freely: the famous Rainbow Juice, for instance, can blend more than twenty varieties into something that defies the categories of rose and orange wine entirely.
The Wines
Alongside the playful field blends, Belton now makes single-site Pinot Noir and Chardonnay that drill down on the specific places the family farms. The range remains eclectic and curious, but always rooted in a scientist's respect for terroir.
