Focus on Bay wineries: Sileni Estate

Sileni Estates picked up the top prize for pinot noir at the Sydney International Wine Competition.

Summer is about relaxing with friends and maybe enjoying a glass of wine. Hawke’s Bay is known for its fine wines. In this summer series, Roger Moroney profiles our best-known wineries

You gotta love those grand arrival entranceways that are a dominant feature of so many Hawke's Bay wineries.

Sileni Estates is right up there - especially with the great backdrop vista of gentle rolling hills and of course the flanks of grape vines, row upon leafy row.

It is another relative newcomer to the Bay's colourful and much-lauded winescape having turned out the first vintage in 1998, and since then of course the awards and accolades have flowed.

It's a good name for a winery because it blends a sort of Italian classical feel with the unique terrain of the Bay.

In Roman mythology a character by the name of Sileni used to spend time with a mate called Bacchus.

Bacchus was the god of wine ... not a bad mate to have.

Sileni was built from the ground up in 1997 by the remarkable Graeme Avery, who did more than just build a winery to create his own label.

With decades of international business experience, he arrived in the Bay and set about helping steer the development of the Hawke's Bay Wine Country brand, the Hawke's Bay Farmers Market and Food Hawke's Bay.

Devotion to the region's food and wine landscape and unerring and inspired vision saw him pick up national accolades.

Winemaker Grant Edmonds joined him at the very start of it all.

Edmonds was a wine visionary in his own right having worked for Villa Maria and Esk Valley Estates.

The way the business partnership was forged was pretty simple.

In the words of Mr Avery - "I rang up and said, what do you think of setting up a wine business?"

Mr Edmonds has always had a thing for merlot, so of course amid the fine line up of chardonnays, pinot noirs, syrahs, sauvignon blancs and sparklings there are a trio of merlots - led by the acclaimed EV Hawke's Bay Merlot.

Built from scratch, the winery is able to cover all production bases and is designed to crush more than 1500 tonnes of grapes and, as has been the case since that first vintage, the crew follow a clear path of what they call "environmentally sustainable viticultural and winemaking practices".

The plaudits through the years have been as rich as the reds - at a major wine competition in Germany in 2011 they picked up 11 awards - and just recently picked up the top prize for pinot noir at the 34th Sydney International Wine Competition.

So they are worth a visit for a spot of tasting as well as to peruse the Epicurean Centre and gourmet foodstore, which lines up the finest products from the Bay, the rest of the country and internationally. And check out the cheese larder.

CHECK OUT
Sileni Estates: 2016 Maraekakaho Rd, Hastings.
Taste: The Plateau Pinot Noir 2013 and the chardonnay selection.
Cellar store hours: Seven days a week from 10am to 5pm during summer (October to April); five days a week from 10am to 4pm during winter (May to September).
*Wine Discovery Centre and Sileni are available for events and functions.