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The annual grape harvest is currently in full swing, but it’s proving to be a particularly challenging one for local winemakers.
Long spells of humidity and intermittent heavy rainfall throughout the summer have caused some grapes to rot, with many crops reduced and a few vineyards not being picked at all.
After the last storm the Thursday before Easter, producers were unanimous in hoping for a long, dry spell and no more wind and rain.
However, it’s far from all bad news and there are still plenty of good grapes out there. David Hoskins and Mary Evans at Heron’s Flight in Sharp Road held their annual ‘public picking’ on Good Friday, and they were very happy with the red Dolcetto grapes that came in for their rose.
“The grapes were perfect. There was no disease in the fruit so we were able to pick it quickly,” David says. “The rain didn’t really affect us. We’re organic, we don’t use herbicides, so it gets absorbed by the grass and the weeds in the rows.”
This is the couple’s 25th vintage at Heron’s Flight and the area has changed incredibly since then.
“We had the first cellar door up here and the only cellar door for six years,” David says. “The first wine trail map which came out in 1998 had just six producers – Ransom, Ascension, Matakana Estate, Hyperion, Heron’s Flight and Mahurangi Estate (now Mahurangi River). That started everything off.”
By 2008, there were around 20 vineyards, wineries and cellar doors on the map, the markets took off and Matakana had become a real “destination”.
Another of the region’s pioneer wine producers is celebrating a milestone vintage this year – 2016 will be Ransom Wines’ 20th harvest. Robin Ransom says they were among the first to experiment with white varieties locally, leading the way with Chardonnay, Pinot Gris and, more recently, Spanish variety Albarino.
“When we set up, we knew that the cellar door was going to be a major part of our selling arrangement, so we thought if you’re going to do that, you have got to have a range of wines to attract people,” he says.
They were also the first to make a rose wine in the region, with their drier style Vin Gris. This experimentation with new styles hasn’t stopped either, since Ransom has recently launched the Matakana region’s first commercial “orange” wine. This is not, as the name might suggest, anything to do with oranges, but a style of white wine made in a very basic way, without chilling or filtering and using only natural yeasts for fermentation.
“It’s a Pinot Gris, but we put it into barrels and just left it, allowed the temperature to rise, and bottled it without filtration,” Robin says. “We’ve called it ‘Compleat PiG’, with ‘compleat’ meant as a condition of accomplishment, not just an assembly of things. It’s got good body, nicely balanced, and still got pretty good acid. Some people say it’s a bit like Chardonnay, but it definitely tastes of Pinot Gris.”
