Kaipara Estate heads new influx of wine

You don't need a working winery, flash new French oak barrels or shiny stainless steel tanks to make wine today. All you need are grapes, money and contacts.

It also helps if you know what you're doing, as do the owners of the Auckland region's newest wine label, Kaipara Estate.

Brandon Orr and Judy McIntosh may be better known to their friends as a medical specialist and actress but the husband-and-wife team have spent the past decade preparing to release the first wines from their small vineyards at South Head, just north of Auckland.

They are not pioneering but re-pioneering the area, insists Orr, who was once chairman of the Auckland Vine Improvement Group.

"South Head was first a wine growing region in the 1860s, according to Dick Scott's book Pioneers of New Zealand Wine, and our going there is about rediscovery rather than first-time pioneering."

The couple bought their first nine hectares at South Head 10 years ago and within 10 months had planted grapes and given birth to their first child.

Nine years, two more children and another vineyard later, they have three vintages of wine under their belts. This year they gave their wines a public outing - a semillon/chardonnay, syrah, pinot noir, merlot cabernets malbec blend, and South Head Red.

Nothing about their venture is a rush, not least because it takes time to determine which grape varieties will grow best, which is why Orr has planted merlot, chardonnay, pinot noir, semillon, arneis, cabernets franc and sauvignon, malbec, tannat (brought into New Zealand by ex-rugby player Andy Haden), barbera, nebbiolo and petit verdot.

Despite the experimentation, he plans to produce only 1500 cases of wine at maximum production, a rise of 500 from the 1000 cases presently made.

The flagship wine will be a traditional Bordeaux blend that is probably made mostly from cabernet sauvignon.

"Style is more important to us than varietal wines, which I think are over-rated because they express so many weaknesses of their grape varieties in poor vintages, where stylistic wines can vary in grape varieties from one year to the next but achieve more consistency of flavour," says Orr.

Both of the vineyard sites are north-facing, bar a small slice of south-facing land, on which they have planted the earlier and mid-season ripening varieties, pinot noir and chardonnay.

They have now had three vintages of their Kaipara Estate wines from 2003, last year's was made at Alpha Domus winery in Hawkes Bay but from this year they have taken the more logical step of using local Auckland-based wine maker Shayne Cox from Corazon Wines.

"Cox's local knowledge and involvement in grape growing and wine making on the Awhitu Peninsula makes him far better to work with our grapes and understand the needs of grapes grown in this climate and environment."

As to which grape is most promising, Orr opts for malbec but adds that it is too early to be definitive yet.

To order Kaipara Estate wines or find out more, phone/fax (09) 376 7208 or email through the link below.