Farm by hand
No hedge-cutters, no mechanical pickers, no shortcuts. Every row gets walked, every bunch gets looked at — twice.
Twenty-eight years on the same hill
Marlowe began as a gamble — forty acres on a south-east face that everyone said was too exposed — and became the quietest, most consistent estate in the Dundee Hills.
Our story
Farmed by hand, from the start
Our parents planted the first vines in 1998 with a second-hand tractor and a rule: if a job can be done by hand, it should be. That rule has never changed. We prune by hand, pick block by block at dawn, and sort berries on the crush pad the same way — by hand.
In the cellar, winemaker Lena Marlowe favours whole-cluster fermentations, neutral oak and long lees contact. The style is unhurried, site-driven, and made for the cellar as much as the table.
Today the estate is forty acres of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Gamay and Cabernet Franc, farmed by a team of eleven — most of whom have worked this hill for over a decade.
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Years farming the same hill
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Estate vineyard
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The way we work
Three rules we don't bend
Let the site speak
Whole clusters, neutral oak, patience. We intervene in the cellar only when the wine asks for it — which is less often than you'd think.
Small is the point
Five and a half thousand cases, no more. The moment we can't name every barrel, we'll have grown too big.
Meet the team
The people behind the pour
Lena Marlowe
Studied oenology in Burgundy, came home, and never left. The whole-cluster philosophy is hers.
Tom Okabe
Knows every vine on the hill by the way it leans. If the frost fans hum, he's already awake.
Rosa Delgado
Runs the terrace with a calm that makes every tasting feel like it's just for you.
Come see the hill
The best way to understand an estate is to stand on it. The terrace is open Wed–Sun.