Claire Mulholland

Training at Otago University and Lincoln University gave Claire Mulholland the academic base, but the work itself was built in the vineyard and the cellar. At Rippon Vineyard in Wanaka, Chard Farm winery, and Gibbston Valley wines, she moved through vineyard worker roles before becoming Assistant Winemaker at Gibbston Valley and then head winemaker at Amisfield. The progression is plain: site work first, then winemaking responsibility, then management.

Today, as General Manager and winemaker at Burn Cottage Vineyard in Central Otago, Mulholland works with Pinot Noir from both sides of the business, where stewardship and production sit in the same job.

Mulholland has said, "I loved that the Burn Cottage company was 100 percent committed to the area of winegrowing that I was most inspired by. And the opportunity to work alongside world class vigneron Ted Lemon was pretty special and too much to resist." The point is a tight one: a winery’s methods matter, but so does its commitment to a specific patch of ground. At Burn Cottage Vineyard, that alignment gives her work a clear frame, with the vineyard setting the terms for the wine.

She has also described the vineyard approach there: "There was no herbicide, no artificial fertilizers – everything was manure and compost and planting crops to build the soils up, and we planted into that." That describes a farming system built from soil care upward, with cover crops, compost, and manure doing the slow work before any fruit is picked. For a Pinot Noir site in Central Otago, that kind of groundwork is part of the cellar’s starting conditions.

Burn Cottage Sabine's Selection Pinot Noir 2022, Burn Cottage Pinot Noir, and Moonlight Race are the wines that most clearly show Claire Mulholland’s focus. They point to Pinot Noir as the central variety in her work, and to a style shaped by detail, texture, and site.