A Special Destination

December 2021: Hi folks! Our Cellar Door is now open for tasting with safeguards during Covid-19 times. Our opening times are 11-1 and 2-6 daily with two conditions – please call ahead (021 1888 638) to arrange a time giving at least 30 minutes pre-arrival time for us to be ready to receive you (as we are very busy in the vineyard at this time of year and we may be temporarily off-site at times!). And have your Vaccine Pass to show at the door.

However, if you are on the island, by contacting us,  you will be able to taste and purchase up to eight of our new release wines.  You can also purchase online through our website shop and click and collect. Purchase through the online shop and we will let you know when your selection is packed and ready for pickup or we can ship all over NZ.

If you are anywhere else in New Zealand purchase online and we will pack and deliver by courier post. All our wines currently available can be delivered door-to-door as usual from our online shop sales. However as a Christmas special shipping is free!

For any enquiries about available wines, deliveries or the benefits of our Cellar Club (up to 20% off) , please check the online shop or contact Lance directly on 0211 888 638

Please come and taste some unique and special single vineyard, single varietal, cellar-aged, natural, ‘slow wines’, while they are still available. ‘Natural’ wines’, ‘authentic wines’, not ‘mucked about with’ wines – whatever winemakers call them, our visitors generally remark – ‘Wow that’s different” or, ‘I have never tasted a wine like that before”. As James Goode MW says, ‘natural wines smell better, taste better and are better for our planet’.

Our keys to maximizing individuality and expression of our unique terroir are growing great hand-picked and selected grapes in the vineyard using intensive, impeccable, sustainable, low-cropping viticulture with careful canopy and soil management following the best organic principles and complete avoidance of herbicides, along with nil or minimal intervention by the winemaker, ie keeping the winemaking as simple and as clean as possible. Our processes avoid crushing, pumping of must and fining with animal products.  Our ferments are gentle slow, natural ferments in small batches with minimal cap plunging. After light pressing off the skins the most important single factor in our winemaking program is – time – that is extended cellar ageing – bottling after 3 to four years followed typically another 3-6 years of bottle ageing in the cellar before release – to allow slow, natural development in the bottle in controlled cellar conditions to achieve optimal drinking age in the bottle. We taste each vintage every year and when our winemaker wants to start drinking a vintage is when we release to you! Buano vino lentamente or ‘slow wines’. Remember, fine wine takes time!

By keeping things as pure and simple in the vineyard and winery as we can, we hope we might better express our turangawaewae – and, by allowing the vineyard terroir to do the talking – give our wines a sense of place. After all, our vineyard sits on a very special geological site of an ancient mountain ridge (once 10,000 feet high) composed of Upper Jurassic sedimentary sandstones, cherts and greywackes, injected here and there with volcanic basaltic lavas that enrich our soils – already layered with volcanic ash from nearby Rangitoto, with iron and magnesium minerals. You just might be tasting 155 million years of geological history in your glass!