Ashley Huntington is a man on a mission, with great courage of conviction and incredible persistence. Though he has a background as a winemaker and spent many years working in the Languedoc region of France in that field, after purchasing a property in the Derwent Valley perfect for viticulture, he ended up brewing beer. The reason he was so interested in this alternative path was the discovery that the region grew in excess of 80% of the nation's hops, which can only be used for beer production. In spite of this fact there were no local breweries, and thus he embarked on a mission to take the same approach to beer as he had to wine; using well-grown local raw materials, fermenting naturally and not filtering. It has taken many years but he is now held in high esteem as the craft beer market continues to grow in Australia.