When Danish winemaker Uffe Deichmann emerged from the crowd at a 2012 Canberra music festival with a bloodied lip, he certainly wasn’t looking for love. The Dane had been working vintage (harvesting) at a South Australian winery and was having one last mosh before heading home to Scandinavia.
“I met Nicole at the festival and thought, ‘oh, shit’,” Uffe tells Broadsheet. “It’s the longest one-night stand in history.”
Twelve years on, Uffe and Nicole share a home at South Australia’s Aldinga Beach, two rambunctious young sons, Leo and Beau, and a collision of creative vocations. Nicole crafts ceramic mugs and handmade homewares under the name Nicole is Nicole Ceramics, while Uffe’s Poppelvej Wines is named after the street on which he grew up. The original street sign, hand-painted by Uffe’s great-great-grandfather, hangs on the wall.
Uffe and his brother Jens, who splits his time between Scandinavia and McLaren Vale, grew up in the sleepy coastal town of Hundested, 50 kilometres north of Copenhagen. Moving to South Australia and starting a wine brand wasn’t exactly easy. “It took me five years before I could start paying myself a little bit and stop working full time for other people,” says Uffe.
His McLaren Vale winery – a large shed owned by anaesthetist and winemaker Matthew Brown, who is behind the Dr Plonk label – is anything but sleepy. Uffe thrashes US band Tool while foot-stomping, barrel-topping, hand-bottling and labelling.
The Danish flag hangs proudly above the action, framed by empty wine bottles from across the globe. (Uffe is particularly smitten by Bordeaux.) Down below, wine barrels and ceramic eggs are adorned with chalk drawings scrawled by his kids.
Uffe makes lo-fi wines using fruit sourced from sustainable vineyards across McLaren Vale and the Adelaide Hills. “We make it as naturally as we can,” he says. “Wild ferment, natural fermentation, no additives and very, very small amounts of sulphur.”
You could call it natty.
“But what does that really mean?” he says. “I prefer to say that I make wine from [grapes] that are grown organically. I grew up eating organic food before it was ‘a thing’ back in Denmark. My mum was always very specific about what she put on the table.”
Nicole designs all the Poppelvej wine labels, many of which are named after song titles and Danish phrases. Of the eight countries Poppelvej exports to, 60 per cent goes to Uffe’s homeland.
“The east coast of Australia has become a pretty big market for us. New York, Philadelphia, Washington – high-end restaurants over there love this stuff,” says Uffe. A Michelin-starred chef in Washington purchased nearly all of Uffe’s 2018 Irresistible Impulse Fumé Blanc. “I would much rather make a little less wine but really do it well.”
Nicole worked in IT before ceramics stole her heart. She tried her hand at air-dry clay during a stint living in Copenhagen early on in their relationship.
“I really wanted to do a pottery class in Denmark, but I didn’t know enough Danish to join a class,” she says. “When we moved to South Australia, that was top of my bucket list. I didn’t know anyone and Uffe was busy working, so I sat in the shed with my second-hand wheel, learning from Youtube and spending hours creating. That’s how I really got into it. Luckily, I didn’t have any friends here back then,” she says, laughing.
Building her own backyard studio (much of it by herself) was a game changer. “When the kids were babies, I could put them down for a nap, go out and work for an hour with the baby monitor beside me.”
These days, Nicole is a full-time ceramicist. Her cups, plates, bowls, and crockery appear at Dandelion Vineyards’ Wonder Room and Bloom in Thebarton. She is also a regular at local markets.
Her pride and joy is the Calm Mug, a handmade sensory mug that doubles as a fidgeting aid for anyone with anxious or restless energy. She designed it after a recent ADHD diagnosis.
“So many women in particular are struggling with anxiety, ADHD and mental health issues. They’ve been very supportive of the Calm Mug. I’ve been selling to quite a few countries. There will be a lot of Calm Mugs under Christmas trees this year,” she says.
“I’ve been very open about my mental health issues on my Instagram. It’s been amazing and has helped me process everything.”
She listens to podcasts about Formula 1, health and true crime while she works, and she fills the studio with flowers from roadside stalls, as well as sea glass found during strolls on Aldinga Beach.
The couple have decorated their home with vintage paintings from Danish thrift stores, wine-related posters and Nicole’s collection of Tiff Manuell handbags. Most of their decor is from antique stores and op shops, much of it upcycled by Nicole.
“My brain is always moving on to the next thing,” she says. “Rather than having a rigid and scheduled timeframe, I might sit down at the pottery wheel for two hours, then glaze for two hours, then pack orders for two hours, do some social media, take some photos, make costumes or build things.”
Two part-time assistants help Nicole with admin so she can concentrate on keeping her hands in the clay. Juggling creative careers, especially during the chaos of harvest and vintage, is challenging with two nippers at their heels.
“Every day is a new adventure,” Nicole says. “Every single day we have to discuss who is able to pick up the kids, who’s able to drop off, and whether I’ve got things on in the mornings or afternoons.”
Their Wednesday dates prove invaluable for connection. “We do a yoga session, then go for breakfast,” Nicole says. “We have to do it during the day when the kids are in childcare because we don’t have family here to look after them. It’s an hour of uninterrupted time when we’re not tired because we’ve wrestled children to bed after a long day.”
Life shows zero signs of slowing down. Later this year, Uffe and fellow McLaren Vale winemakers Brad Hickey of Brash Higgins and James Hamilton of Golden Child Wines will open a wine tasting space and bar called Under The Sun in Aldinga.
“I swore I’d never open a cellar door,” Uffe says. “But this won’t be a normal cellar door, it’s a collective. It’ll be a place for people to hang out.”
Read more in our Creative Couples series.
