Adam “Skip” Francis

The Climb

Carpentry put structure, tolerance, and finish into Adam “Skip” Francis’s hands before wine became the medium. Building houses is work where the visible result depends on decisions buried inside the frame; that discipline carries cleanly into vineyard and cellar practice, where timing, restraint, and material judgment matter more than performance. Vintage work gave Adam “Skip” Francis his entry into French cellars and vineyards. At Jean-Marie Fourrier in Burgundy, France, the work came through harvest rhythm and cellar repetition in one of wine’s most exacting landscapes. At Jean-Marie Fourrier's winery in Faugères, Languedoc, France, the same seasonal labour met another place and another cadence. Management and winemaking at Bass Phillip (since 2020) put Adam “Skip” Francis inside the full chain of consequence: vines, ferments, barrels, decisions, and outcomes. “Very much in at the deep end” is an accurate trade description. The role is not adjacent to the work; it is accountable to it.

Today

Dry-farmed, biodynamically managed vineyards set the terms at Bass Phillip. The system asks the site to carry more of the load, without easy intervention, and exceptionally low yields narrow the work to fewer bunches and sharper choices. Minimalist cellar practice defines the handling: wild ferments, no filtration, and minimal sulphur. In Adam “Skip” Francis’s hands, those choices read less as style than as operating constraints. The work is observation-heavy: act when needed, hold back when the wine is better left alone.

Signature

Depuis ‘23 and Reserve Pinot Noir are the named signature wines for Adam “Skip” Francis. Their stated frame is Bass Phillip’s: dry-farmed, biodynamically managed vineyards, exceptionally low yields, wild ferments, no filtration, and minimal sulphur. The through-line is not ornament; it is a controlled reduction of interference around fruit and site.

In Their Words “I have. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm very much in at the deep end. Yes.”