Nathan Kandler, who essentially is Precedent, is a trained winemaker who is much more focused on vineyard than cellar. His ultimate goal is ‘to foster the voice of the soil into your glass of wine through traditional and natural techniques in the vineyard and cellar.’ Nathan’s day job is at Thomas Fogarty Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains and he has worked in the past at many big name wineries in northern California and also Torbreck in the Barossa. He gets a real buzz when he finds sites that have a ‘magical combination of variety, climate and soil’. Discovering and working with these places is what Precedent is all about, with a particular focus on old vines grown in rocky and well drained soils.

The most well-known sites Nathan works with is 'Evangelho' in Contra Costa County, planted in 1890 and widely recognised as a truly great historic Zinfandel vineyard. Dry farmed vines on alluvial granite and quartz sands produce wines with amazing life and soul. The Zinfandel here is co-planted (and then co-fermented) with Carignan, Mourvedre, Palomino, Muscat, Chasselas and others.