Thorne and Daughters Wines was started in 2012 by John and Tasha Seccombe to produce authentic wines in the beautiful Western Cape where they have made their home. It has been a long journey that has taken them around the world and back to where they first met. The couple shares a mutual love for the Cape, and they want to taste its air and sunshine in their wines.  To produce their wines, John and Tasha have drawn on the great history of wine growing in the Cape, putting together old vineyard parcels with new grape varieties and making wines with old school simplicity and modern edge. Their approach to winemaking is simple and gentle, with the aim of making wines that tell a story, not wines that shout and bang a drum. The project was always focused primarily on white wines, with which John has a magical touch.

Winemaking is sensitive and pretty natural, and where necessary he’ll do a bit of skin contact. “For me, Clairette and Semillon have the right soft tannins that work well with skin fermentation,” he says. But the key is good vineyard sources. The main wine is Rocking Horse, which is now around 1,000 cases a year, and the other lines are 100-350 cases. “As we find vineyards that we can work with we open up new ideas,” says John. Many of those new ideas are coming to fruition already with a second label Pinot Noir called Copper Pot, a red blend called Wanderer’s Heart and now a Sauvignon Blanc from a truly extreme vineyard in the Skurfberg.