Nick Mills

Nick Mills is one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary New Zealand winemaking. He currently runs Rippon Vineyard, a family-owned estate located on the shores of Lake Wānaka in Central Otago, facing the Southern Alps. The Mills family has been working this land for four generations, and Rippon is recognized as one of the pioneering estates of modern viticulture in Central Otago.

The son of Rolfe and Lois Mills, the founders of Rippon, Nick grew up surrounded by the vineyard, just as his parents were planting the first experimental plots in the 1970s. After a youth deeply rooted in this land, he left to train in Burgundy, where he studied viticulture and oenology in Beaune and worked with leading estates, before returning to Rippon in the early 2000s. He took over winemaking in 2003, dedicating his work to a rigorous pursuit of terroir expression.

Under his leadership, Rippon has established a philosophy rooted in biodynamics, patient observation of living organisms, and a deep understanding of the soil. The estate, cultivated using biodynamic methods, seeks not so much to impose a style as to let the landscape speak for itself: the schist-covered slopes, the light of Wānaka, the influence of the lake, the old vines, and family heritage.

Nick Mills thus embodies a generation of winemakers for whom excellence goes hand in hand with responsibility. At Rippon, he carries on the family legacy while imbuing the estate with a contemporary depth: that of a wine conceived as a sensitive expression of a place, a climate, a history, and a way of living off the land.