This morning we said goodbye to Auckland City Centre, and boarded our bus to head northwest to the suburb of Kumeu. This area was one of the first to be planted with wine grapes in New Zealand. Croatians who came over to dig for Kauri gum (a form of amber) brought a wine tradition with them and both of our visits were to estates with Croatian ancestry.
Our first visit was to Kumeu River, founded in 1944 by the Brajkovich family. Their Chardonnays have won prizes internationally in many special competitions where they have been tasted blind against top Burgundies and we were full of anticipation. So imagine our how we excitement mounted as we met Michael, Marijana and Paul, three of the four siblings who currently run the business and their mum Melba, who between them gave us a truly wonderful explanation of their history, their philosophy, and tasted with us their wines.
Michael (the winemaker, and the first Kiwi Master of Wine) told us about how he led the replacement of the original vines planted (which went to make fortified wine) with a variety of ‘noble’ varieties, settling on Chardonnay as the most promising (their soils are limestone based, as are those of Burgundy). Expansion in the Kumeu region was virtually impossible and in recent years they have bought land in Hawke’s Bay, focussing on Chardonnay and Pinot Noir (and a ‘fun plot’ of Nebbiolo).
Experimentation continued with different clones, new vineyard techniques to keep vines reaching peak maturity healthy, and in the winery investing in new presses, different fermentation approaches and vessels, specialist kit to achieve disgorgement and dosage of the fizz, and a lot of barrels. The cellar is now double its original size, and contains 900 barrels, where the Chardonnays complete their fermentation, undergo malolactic conversion and then rest on their lees. They bottle their wines themselves and have used screw caps since 2001.
Our tasting took us through every level of their range from the Village wines, through the Estate wines to the Single Vineyard wines. Kumeu River is widely available in the UK, so some of us were revisiting old favourites, and it was fantastic to taste with the family and learn more about the vineyards and winemaking that produce such lovely wines. Our tasting finished with a couple of Pinot Noirs and their Crémant (traditional method fizz). We had to be dragged away.
A couple of minutes up the road from Kumeu River is Soljans Estate Winery. The Soljans family who came from Croatia in 1927 started winemaking in Auckland in 1932, and bought a property in Kumeu in 1937. Today they make a wider variety of styles than Kumeu River, and operate at a bigger scale – buying in grapes and acting as contract winemakers and bottlers, so this visit was a good contrast.
The vines were looking super in the vineyard (we inspected some Chardonnay near the winery), and we then came in to have a tasting led by Denise, one of the family members. She explained part of her role is to riddle the bottles of their Traditional Method sparkling, which spends 30 months on the lees (a very pretty wine). We also tried their Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Pinotage and their ‘Tribute’ Merlot/Malbec blend that had lots of ageing potential, and finished with a fortified wine, which they can currently label as Tawny Port, but under the new Free Trade Agreement with the EU, this will become just ‘Tawny’.
Over a relaxed lunch we had their Gewurztraminer and Pinot Noir, and Tim indulged us in some coffee before we started our trek south, under the care of Kevin our coach driver. Once out of Auckland we seemed to hurtle down the Waikato Expressway, but after Hamilton the roads became single carriageway and we arrived in Taupo with no time to see the lake in daylight. This was a stopover, Tim arranged some wines with dinner, and we retired looking forward to a shorter drive in the morning, heading for Hawke’s Bay.
