About New
Our Story
It started with enjoying wine
Nobody starts out as a wine expert, and we were no different.
For David, the interest grew gradually. There were friends and plenty of different bottles along the way, from Bordeaux and Burgundy to Australian and New Zealand wines. There were also the much cheaper wines that came with university life.
Caryn became interested in wine while studying in Australia. Wine was affordable and there was a tasting circle on campus, so she started learning more about what she was drinking. She enjoyed it and kept learning after she returned to Malaysia and, later, moved to Singapore.
Over time, there was more to it than simply enjoying the wine. We wanted to know where it came from and how it was made. We became interested in the grapes, the vineyards and particularly the people making it.
Eventually, that led to Terroir Wines.
Why Terroir?
We started Terroir because we wanted to share the wines we thought were worth discovering.
A smaller range, on purposeWe aren't interested in filling the shop with hundreds of labels just to have a big range. We prefer working with a smaller number of producers so we can get to know their wines and understand more about what they're doing.
Producers worth knowingSome have been making wine for generations. Others run small family vineyards or produce only a limited number of bottles each year. A lot of our producers work organically or biodynamically too.
One important rule They don't all make wine the same way and that's not what we're looking for anyway. We just have one important rule. We have to like drinking the wine.
How we choose our wines
A good story about a vineyard will get our attention, but the wine itself still needs to be good.
We look at quality and value, of course, but we're also interested in finding wines that offer something different. That might mean a producer we haven't come across before, an interesting vineyard or simply a wine that surprised us when we tasted it.
We also want to know who's making the wine and why they make it the way they do.
Quite often that means we end up bringing in wines from producers most people in Singapore probably haven't heard of.
We don't see that as a problem.
There are plenty of familiar labels already out there. Finding the less familiar ones is one of the things we enjoy about what we do.
We know wine, but we don't think it needs to be complicated
David holds WSET Level 3 with Distinction and has also completed sake studies. Caryn has completed WSET Levels 2 and 3.
We studied wine because we wanted to understand more about it, not because we think everyone needs a qualification before they can enjoy a bottle.
So if you know exactly what you're looking for, that's great. If you can't tell a Pinot Noir from a Pinot Meunier, that's fine too.
You can always ask us.
Tell us what you normally drink or what you're having for dinner. If you're buying for somebody else, tell us a little about them. Even a rough idea of what you want to spend gives us somewhere to start.
There's always another bottle to discover
So yes, keep drinking your favourites. We do.
The ones we go back to
There will always be wines we go back to because we know we enjoy them.
The ones we haven't tried yet
But there are thousands of other wines out there and we certainly haven't tried them all yet. That's part of what keeps wine interesting for us.
But every now and then, try the bottle with the label you don’t recognise. You never know.
Join us for future wine tasting events
