At The Wrekin, a biodynamic vineyard in Marlborough, the rituals start with cow horns and manure
When most people visit a vineyard, they’d probably expect to taste some wine, maybe stroll through the vines, or listen to a vintner extol the properties of a full-bodied Chardonnay.
But on a pale autumn day in 2025, visitors to The Wrekin vineyard in Marlborough were treated to a far different experience: packing cow horns with cow manure.
Outside the property’s farm shed, the group sat around talking and stuffing the fresh manure into the horns, while listening to the vineyard Vigneron, Jeremy Hyland, explain the value the process brings to the land and wine. Later, they watched him pack German chamomile flowers into the lining of a cow’s intestine.
Then, the party went out to a paddock and buried the horns in the ground, where they would stay over the winter – capturing cosmic and lunar forces as they slowly break down.
Once unearthed six months later, the horns will have turned into a nutrient-dense, earthy-smelling humus – otherwise known as Preparation 500. A rich soil conditioner, the preparation will be diluted and “dynamised” – stirred rhythmically for one hour – before being sprayed on the soil in the late afternoon.
If anyone was sceptical of what they saw, they didn’t show it. In fact, there was only curiosity. For Wrekin is a biodynamic vineyard, and in biodynamics, preparations are key.
“The preparations seem to bring more soul to the life in the vineyard,” says Anna Johns, family director responsible for sales and distribution. “And people are a key part of that.”
It can be futile for biodynamic practitioners like the Johns family to prove the impact of their preparations on soil health and wine quality. But that’s not what they’re out to do. Biodynamics, which they’ve been practising since 2017, has given them a means to better connect with the complex and ever-changing organism that is their farm.
“Biodynamics encourages a more holistic viewpoint,” Anna says. “It’s based on years of observing seasons and changes – and fitting in with nature’s rhythms.”
From Organics to Biodynamics
Anna, her siblings, and her parents, Andrew and Jan, first came to the 300-hectare farm in 1998, after Andrew left a career in law to become a sheep and beef farmer. After a few years, they followed their instincts to plant their first Pinot Noir vines on the property, under the guidance of renowned viticulturist Jeremy Hyland.
Jan – a physiotherapist by training – had a deep interest in human health, and felt a strong pull towards organic viticulture. With Jeremy’s support, they transitioned to organics in 2012, achieving full certification with BioGro in 2020.
However, Anna says they eventually realised they wanted to take another step beyond organics, which, although it advocates for soil health, doesn’t necessarily prescribe adding anything back to the land. So in 2017, they started their biodynamic journey, and began making their own preparations in 2018.
“To run things organically, you can limit the use of synthetic inputs but essentially just neglect everything else. But when you take a more holistic or balanced approach, you need to be putting something back in.
“I guess biodynamics was a kind of initial starting point for investigating what we could add back into the land, other than just organic-certified inputs, which can be pretty expensive.”
With plenty of Angus cattle and sheep on the farm, they had an abundance of the material needed for the most fundamental preparation – 500 – which is believed to stimulate microbial activity, regulate soil pH and boost plant nutrient uptake.
“We’re very fortunate on our vineyard because we’re actually a farm as well,” says Jan Johns. “We have cattle, sheep and chickens, and all this manure to grow our own plants and our herbs for the preparations. So it is a closed circuit. We buy in very little fertiliser.”
The Results
Although there are existing and ongoing studies that support the efficacy of biodynamic preparations, most of the conventional science community would be eager to debunk the idea that they work. However, practitioners argue that analysing results in isolation is incongruous with the ethos of biodynamics, which considers an ecosystem to be one interconnected organism.
“It’s so hard to quantify things from a chemical perspective, or test for it in a lab,” says Anna. “When you go down that track, you’re almost trying to isolate things too much. When you’re talking about horticulture, it’s nature, right? You can’t just take one aspect of horticulture and over-analyse it in a silo.”
However, when you consider anecdotal and field evidence, the Johns family has plenty to show that their practices work. When they first performed the standard worm count test – counting the number of worms in a patch of soil – a few years back, there were an average number. But when they performed the same test a few years after adhering to biodynamics, there were so many worms that they topped the Great Kiwi Earthworm Survey.
“We got the best worm count in New Zealand, although it may have been dry in Central Otago and other places that day, so it wasn’t really fair,” says Jan.
“We look at the soil every year and we can see how it improves, how friable it is, the mycorrhizae and the life. You can see what’s happening there.”
Healthy Soil, Healthy Body
Although she grew up on the farm, Anna joined the vineyard’s team later in its biodynamic journey. After living in Christchurch for seven years and working in engineering, she returned to Marlborough in 2023 with her partner, Andy, to become the vineyard’s sales manager.
While her science background had led her down a different career path, she wholeheartedly embraced the biodynamic journey in part because of her own “health crisis” – she was diagnosed with melanoma and underwent immunotherapy as part of her treatment.
However, she knew that the treatment alone would not be enough to recover fully – there needed to be significant lifestyle changes as well.
“I needed a different role where I wasn’t so desk-based. I needed variation, to go outside and get sun exposure (but not too much) and build muscle and strength. And I needed to be back with my family.”
Healing her body with healthy food while working in a field that advocates for the intentional adding of nutrient-dense preparations to the land seemed to provide a powerful parallel for Anna, deepening her commitment to biodynamic principles. Coupled with Jan’s passion for nutrition and its symbiotic relationship with soil health, Wrekin provided the perfect environment to recover and thrive beyond conventional medicine.
“Modern medicine agrees that your diet and exercise play such a massive role, but it baffles me that you can’t get a straight answer from your oncologist about diet, when food is the number one external input we put in our bodies. So I became much more interested in food, exercise, and the microbiome and gut health when I came back to live here.”
Community Involvement
Aside from the direct benefits biodynamics has had on the quality of the soil and the plants, the most valuable impact has come from the people and community that have rallied around the vineyard.
With a growing cohort of biodynamic winemakers in Marlborough, the Wrekin team found a rich resource of support and enthusiasm for what they were doing. Near 10 minutes’ drive to Blenheim, Wrekin became a sort of hub for growers to gather and learn more about the principles and practices, with Jeremy leading the events and working bees.
For Jan, the community nature of biodynamics has provided a foil to the isolation that often comes with farming.
“Farming is not that easy, it’s not entirely lucrative, and it can be lonely. I think social connections in wine growing and farming are really important for the human soul.”
Likewise, Anna, who is at the start of her biodynamic journey, says the community element was her main draw to the practice in the first place.
“There’s this fantastic community that comes out to share knowledge and teach, but you also get so many travellers interested in what we do. Biodynamics is more widely accepted in Europe – it’s an old-world method – so we get wine lovers from France coming to get work experience in a vineyard or winery, and we’re just seeing far more younger people come through.”
With very little investment required to step into biodynamics, Anna says it only brings benefits to their operation. The staff are happier because of the care, intentionality and presence that the practice fosters, while the preparations themselves allow people to step out of their practical mind and embrace something deep and almost spiritual.
“You don’t have to take Rudolf Steiner’s teachings at face value – like collecting non-fertilised dandelions on an ascending flower day, or an earth day or root day. Instead, you just do what you’re comfortable with, like noticing runoff, the amount of certain insects about, or what the land is doing.”
With its deep focus on astrology and lunar forces, Anna says biodynamics is simply revisiting ancient indigenous wisdom, which considers the movement of the stars and moon to be a vital part of growing food. And as in indigenous methods, involving the community is just as important.
“The preparation days are brilliant. We do them a couple of times a year and it’s an excuse to see everyone more regularly and learn as a group, rather than making all the mistakes on our own.
“It’s a beautiful thing to do with your community.”