Mark Stephens Email & Phone Number

Stanford, South Africa

Overberg, South Africa

I created the Root Wine Company after six years of travelling the world in search of the finest "natural wines" only to find this term mostly associated with faulty or neglectful winemaking. Those that I enjoyed the most were a result of attentive viticulture with no mention of catchy terms such as natural. My aim through The Root Wine Co. is to search for vineyards where the combined expression of the site and cultivar result in a wine that doesn't need much intervention.

Managing all cellar operations during harvest under the winemakerSetting up and managing workers for grape intakeFermentation managementall post harvest wine work

Sonoma, California

Enterprise Vineyards is a Biodynamic and Organic vineyard management company. Here I learnt a natural approach to precision viticulture and how to work with nature to produce excellent, healthy fruit. Mostly, I picked grapes.

Hemel En Aarde Valley, South Africa

My time at Creation was exactly the 180 I needed after my first harvest experience. Here I was exposed to precise, high quality winemaking techniques. 2014 was a very challenging vintage and I learnt how best to manage that in the cellar in order to ensure a high quality product. JC was definitely the best person to learn from under these circumstances as having grown up making wine in Switzerland, he was used to adverse conditions during the ripening period and took it in his stride.

Swartland, South Africa

Ones first immersive experience in a cellar will always be the most defining and my time working under Adi and Jasper showed me a completely alternative way to view the world of winemaking. This internship was part of my 4th year Hons project in which we worked in a winery in order to conduct trials in a live setting. My mentors handed me the red pill and made me question everything I had learnt during my studies. Their creativity in how they made wine and handled the challenges of harvest opened my eyes to the artistry in the science of winemaking. For this I will be eternally grateful.