All Saints farmer wants a wife
Jane Faulkner
Nick Brown, winemaker, All Saints, Rutherglen and star of The Farmer Wants a Wife on Channel 9 [©Nine Network Australia]
He’s a young, tall sun-bleached blonde. Handsome yet somewhat shy with impeccable manners, now that’s rare. Plus, he’s the wealthy winemaker/co-owner of All Saints/St Leondards in Wahgunyah in the wine region of Rutherglen. By anyone’s definition Nick Brown has it all. But he wants a wife. Or at least a girlfriend.
Just in case you have been living under a rock or you’re not a single, female under the age of 30, Nick is one of the eligible bachelors staring in the Channel 9 rating hit, The Farmer Wants a Wife. And judgement day is Monday. That’s when the final program screens and where he and the other blokes have to choose their preferred shiela: Kristy or Stephanie in Nick’s case.
From watching the show, for research puposes of course, it seemed easy to guess who Nick was going to choose. There wasn’t a lot of chemistry going between the wannabe Miss Australia, Kirsty, 19 or 23-year-old Stephanie, the personal assistant who wears way too much makeup. Although in last week’s episode Nick nearly choked when Stephanie decided a snog, tongue and all, was appropriate. Even his mother baulked.
Stephanie 's eagerness to get involved on the farm, while Kirsty slept in, the snog and her confidence that Nick would ultimately pick her made her a shoe-in. However Nick stunned viewers when he turned up at Kirsty's parents home.
Nick had nothing to lose trying to find a girlfriend on national television because the alienation, tyranny of distance plus the long, long hours working on the land make it especially hard to find single women.
“Up here there’s a drought going on with a lack of water and lack of compatible ladies,” says Nick. It goes a long way in explaining why a shy guy would go to such lengths to meet women. Besides, he happily admits doing the series “was such fun, a great experience yet completely surreal. It was amazing to see how the show is put together meeting the other guys and girls along the way; a very strange experience having that much attention from girls but good at the same time.”
The real downside for Nick, being a shy fella who doesn’t give much away, the intrusion into his privacy was a big change. He gets half a dozen emails a week from girls or mothers and fathers of single girls and there are the phone calls to the winery that have nothing to do with harvesting equipment. “To be honest, it’s the first time I’ve ever started locking the doors,” he quips.
Well, each week, hundreds of thousands of women have been tuning in to watch the farmers, and does he, too, sit down on Monday evenings and watch the show? Yes, but certainly not in any narcissistic sense.
“I can’t stand watching myself and I hate the sound of my voice,” he says, “but I love seeing the other boys and their properties and seeing the ups and downs they are going through with the girls.” He’s even busy organising a reunion with all the guys!
So has the experience taught him anything? “Yes, that there are plenty of nice girls out there. It’s just about finding the right one, the right one to fit into the lifestyle I lead.”
But let’s put this in context. Nick has been “spreading pig shit manure, getting ready to plant more marsanne, ordering a heap of grenache, mourvedre and cinsault to replace the ruby cabernet planted in the 1970s. Can’t wait.”
He adds that while he hasn’t found a wife “a girlfriend would be good with the possibility of something more serious down the track.” Join the queue, ladies.
Regions
- Rutherglen (VIC)
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