the not serious Matt Dicey

Tell you what, Matt Dicey has to be one of the nicest dudes in the biz. He’s relaxed. He likes a laugh but is a veritable book of knowledge when it comes to the craft of winemaking and his enthusiasm for the process hasn’t even slightly waned after 30 years of turning grape juice into wine. 

Many of you will know him from his days as the Mt Difficulty winemaker. He was driving that bus for 22 years and almost 80% of the wine produced by the brand was sold here in Aotearoa so it stands to reason Matt is a familiar face in the NZ wine story. 

After the family and subsequent shareholders sold the established winery Matt transitioned to a position he likes to call Caretaker alongside his brother James in a family project. The siblings and their significant others, Ali and Odelle, had bought their own small parcels of land in Bannockburn years ago. Confident they’d be keen to shed the demands of a large operation and return to a boutique production, each family had planted vines somewhere around 2002 with a view that one day they’d have a cool side gig to work on together. Welcome to 2020 🙂 (and covid) 🙄 

Initially established in 2005 and called Ceres, after the Goddess of Harvest and the small South African village where the Dicey kids were born, the family brand needed something of an overhaul to meet the new demands of a market that had shifted somewhat since the side project’s inception. 

Engaging a team to help brainstorm, rebrand and renovate what had been 14 years of work, Dicey was born. It seems obvious. The dictionary definition of the word is “unpredictable and potentially dangerous". And, as you’ll have noticed, it’s their surname. Talk about lucky! It’s an apt adjective for the art growing grapes in an arid dustbowl that has temperature fluctuations of “freeze your balls off” to “how’s the sun stroke?” and struggles to grow weeds.  

They launched Dicey in February 2020, and were due to come screaming, side-drifting into the Auckland market in March — right on lockdown. Talk about unlucky! 

All this back story and branding malarkey aside, how’s the wine? Bloody tasty and we had the pleasure of scoffing a glass straight from a newly released goon bag of premium 2021 Pinot Noir. You heard us — only a flamin’ bag-in-box. Talk about dicey!

It’s a cute little 2L brick that is designed to look like a cube on top of a cube. It’s fondly named Dice by Dicey riffing on that highly flexible surname of theirs and the fact that, alongside a serious commitment to great juice lies a lot of dry humour. We asked Matt why on earth they wanted to put premium Pinot in a box instead of a bottle and it turns ‘earth’ was the optimal word to use. It turns out the old goon sack is something

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Special thanks to my pal, Benj Brooking of Popular.nz for his help with the editing. An expert filmmaker, editing these chats is being done as one mate helping another. Thanks Benj. You're a legend.

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