Blank Canvas

About Blank Canvas Wines

Blank Canvas is the personal wine range of husband and wife team, Matt Thomson and Sophie Parker-Thomson MW:
“We want our wines to speak of the place and time they are from, to be ephemeral in that each wine is never to be repeated, but enduring because they evoke something inside of us.”

Having completed over fifty back-to-back vintages in both New Zealand and Europe as an award-winning winemaking consultant, Matt together with Sophie felt it was time to create and build a wine brand together, with their first vintage in 2013.

Winemaking

Blank Canvas embodies their own expression of art-meets-science with single-vineyard, small batch wines that push the sensory boundaries and challenge winemaking orthodoxy.

Each vineyard, wine and vintage are treated differently from year to year. They largely allow indigenous yeast ferments, natural malolactic fermentation, avoid battonage, use minimal SO2 additions, and avoid fining and filtration when they can.

Winemaker Matt Thomson’s science background defines the parameters of his winemaking canvas, allowing creativity to flow within those bounds.

The overall production for Blank Canvas is around 42,000 bottles only.

The vineyards

Matt and Sophie search for what they feel are the best sub-regions, sites and soils for the particular variety they are making.

All vineyards are 100% sustainable certified. The growers have a long-term commitment to the land, working with a regenerative viticulture mentality.

The name Blank Canvas

Matt and Sophie explain: "We approach every vineyard, every vintage and every wine as a Blank Canvas. Every wine is from a single vineyard and is small batch in nature. As a result, they are a manifestation of the exact time and place they are from, with every site and every vintage reflecting the differences unique to it. ... So, if our wines are a canvas to paint a snapshot of time, a portrait of our growers, a view of the hillside, we want to paint a work of wonder, a piece that moves you. A masterpiece. And this is why with every wine we make, we start with a Blank Canvas."