Do what you love, love what you do.
Meet Darragh
I started my winemaking career back in 2008. I love working as a winemaker, and can’t imagine working at anything else. I get immense satisfaction producing a product off the land and selling it.
Hawke’s Bay is a beautiful area to grow grapes and live. Every growing season is different and exciting, and I have to play the cards that mother nature gives us every vintage. Coming into harvest I often have a game plan of how the wines will be made, but this changes depending on the weather and other influences.
I find you have to adapt and change and let the wine speak of that vintage. It takes time in the industry as a winemaker to understand wine and only impact the wine when required.
The best thing I can do is be authentic and make the best wine possible with passion.
Darragh’s Backstory
There has been a long history, over a hundred years in the drinks industry in my family.
It all started with buying Digby’s Bar which was established by my great grandfather back in 1910. Digby's Bar & Restaurant is situated in Killylea, south of Armagh city in Northern Ireland. It first opened its doors in 1910 trading as a public house and green grocers in the old bar as it is known today. It was run by Thomas and Elizabeth Digby for 43 years until their youngest son, Mark, and wife, Kitty, took over.
In 1973, they expanded the business with the addition of a small family run restaurant. Keeping with the family tradition, Sheelagh, their daughter, along with her husband Michael, took over the responsibility and ownership in 1988, and still work there today.
My grandad Vincent moved to Scotland in 1950 to carry on the tradition there. He was quick to spot the trend to drink more dinner wine and positioned the business to cater for this demand, gaining an enviable reputation for the quality and range of his wines. When Vincent retired the business was continued by his sons Vincent Jr and Brian until they retired just before the turn of the century.
My dad opened Innisfree Crystal in 1976, to create hand crafted Crystal in Sligo, on the west coast of Ireland. One of the original, quality brands of Irish hand-cut crystal that had a boom time in the 1970s and 80s. Every piece of hand crafted Crystal was engraved by hand. It seems a love for the beautiful and handcrafted runs in the family.
On the Maxim Wines label there is Darragh’s thumbprint.
You must know your past, and Darragh’s history help carve out in the wine industry with his grandad and uncle’s wine merchants and his entrepreneurial Dad setting up the Crystal factory.
