Winemakers under the Kumeu Sun

Twenty years ago winemakers were leaving Kumeu in droves. Now they are returning - and not just as lifestylers. CARROL du CHATEAU joins an autumn harvest.

Every autumn Tim Harris, of Harrier Rise vineyard, plays a waiting game with the weather. Here in Kumeu, 25 minutes northwest of Auckland where the fading autumn heat hovers over the flats, these last clear days are crucial as grapevines enclosed in bridal white veils soak up the last of the sun.

As in most of New Zealand, the growing season here has been patchy this year. Budburst, which determines when the grapes will form, was overdue and was followed by a cool and blustery spring, moving into a windy January, which means the merlot grapes we are about to pick have reached the flavour and sugar balance Harris is waiting for precariously late.

For the past few weeks, when the weather finally did settle into a glorious Indian summer, it's been a competition between the starlings, wasps and bees to get the harvest in before the grapes are pecked off, sucked dry, coated in botrytis mould or waterlogged by a late cyclone.

As Harris says, "We've really got to run the risk of hanging them out until the acid levels drop a bit and to develop the flavour - that's probably more important this year than sugar levels."

For Harris' friends, neighbours and relatives it has been a waiting game, too. The invitation to join his social grape-pick - as distinct from his professional picking team - usually arrives by late March. This year when the pale yellow envelope finally turns up, it is well into April and only three days before harvest. But, such is the joy of a day in Kumeu, here we are on Sunday morning, dew still glistening on the grass, listening to Harris' instructions, ready for action.

Then we begin, armed with seriously sharp secateurs, instructions to throw away any mouldy grapes and take each bunch by its stem to avoid being stung by bees with only their backsides poking out of grapes.

Two of the tallest men lift the veils off the grapes as carefully as any bridegroom would. Brian drives Harris' skinny little tractor, just big enough to get between the French-style, tight-planted rows, dropping off plastic bins every few metres. And the rest of us start, Barbara on the shady side of the row, me in the morning sun, clipping, talking and tasting.

This late in the season, it's complicated work. At the beginning of rows the grapes are thrashed by birds. Further along they're thick and hanging with bees. The upside, says Jeremy Dunningham, an ex-postie and parole officer-turned-cellar-and-vineyard-hand, is that the bees are too drunk on sweet red grape juice to sting. Luckily he's right.

While the vineyard's trademark harrier hawk glides on wide wings over the vines looking for mice, and kids race up and down between the rows on mountain bikes, the sun gets higher in the sky, then with amazing speed, starts to dip toward the horizon again.

I eat lots of grapes, then, before even one bee sting and after only two snips on the fingers, it's time to party.

Over four-and-a-half hours, with 15 minutes off for noon-time tea, the 40 of us pick two 360m rows. This adds up to roughly 100 bins which, says Harris, will translate to about a tonne of grapes, equalling 750 litres of wine which will, in 14 months, fill 1000 bottles of Harrier Rise Uppercase Merlot.

Although we're all aware that we're not the fastest pickers in the world, it is something of a shock when my friend John Webber, vice president of the New Zealand Grape Growers' Council, says a couple of nights later, "Do you know how much a Mexican can pick?" "No." "220 kilos a man-hour."

Gulp.

The Mexicans, of course, along with Harris' usual team of pickers, are full-time professionals.

We are romantic amateurs, filled with the joy of a day in the vineyard and with eyes firmly fixed on the prize - a long and wine-soaked lunch.

John Webber, who grows grapes for Selaks and Nobilo, both originally Kumeu vineyards, is typical of growers who believe the Auckland climate is just too humid for wine-making. Today all his grapes are grown in Marlborough. Most are chardonnay and sauvignon blanc, all are machine-harvested, mechanically leaf-plucked and irrigated - and they regularly win prizes.

"Last year the Selaks' Founders Reserve Nobel Riesling 1999 won the Air New Zealand champion Sweet Wine of the Show, and Nobilo's Icon 1999 Savignon Blanc won the International Wine and Spirits competition 2000 for best savignon blanc in the world - as well as two other gold medals," he says.

The figures get even more outlandish. "This vintage Waiheke will do in the order of 100 tonnes of grapes while the New Zealand vintage will be around 70,000 tonnes. New Zealand production is quite insignificant by world standards. France and Italy produce more than five million tonnes each."

While Webber might be the voice of business, people like Harris and his neighbours at Kumeu River Vineyard stoutly defend West Auckland grape-growing.

Tim Harris' vineyard produces between 45 and 48 tonnes of grapes a year, and his wines have had much critical acclaim, while over the past 20-odd years, the Brajkovich family of Kumeu River, with their 30-odd hectares of vines and five contract growers, have proved that the climate here can produce marvellously complex French-style wines.

What's more, says Kumeu River marketing manager Paul Brajkovich, land prices in places like Marlborough, where the best vineyard land is selling for just over $12,000 a hectare, have crept up to meet those of West Auckland.

Not that the Kumeu renaissance has been easy. In 1982, when Brajkovich's elder brother Michael, who was to be winemaker, came back from studying to become one of New Zealand's half a dozen Masters of Wine at Roseworthy College in Australia, the decision to stay in Kumeu looked risky.

The exodus from Auckland was in full flight. Corbans, Selaks, Cooks, Nobilo and Matua Valley were pulling up their local vineyards and trucking in grapes from Gisborne and further afield. "The word was, you can't grow grapes in Kumeu."

But Kumeu River founder Mate Brajkovich who had started here in 1944, always had faith in West Auckland. Paul remembers his father saying to Michael: "Come on, with all the things you've learned about trellising to catch the sun, canopy management, better root stock and so on, we can grow grapes here. Let's give it a go."

Today, nine years after Mate's death, Kumeu River is one of the most successful wineries in the country, producing some of our best chardonnays, merlots, pinot noir and pinot gris. The respected American magazine The Wine Enthusiast awarded 90 or more points out of 100 to four 1999 and 1998 Kumeu River wines, making them outstanding by world standards.

Says the magazine: "There is no doubt that Kumeu River has made its mark with its chardonnays, which are some of the longest-lived in the New World. A 1991 Kumeu River Chardonnay tasted last November, was just starting its downward slide. Expect the tightly wound Mate's Vineyard wine to age even longer."

In other words, these immaculately tended, hand-picked, hand-plucked vines where they even hand-position the growing shoots, are comparable with anything else that is being produced in New Zealand - or the world.

Tim Harris agrees. "You don't get huge quantities, but you get jolly good crops. Our grapes are full-flavoured. Kumeu's main drawback is that it's not fashionable. Cooks and Corbans found it wasn't good for Muller Thurgau grapes, and pulled out."

As for the humidity, Harris has not sprayed with fungicide since early February to make certain there is no residue at picking time. "The bulk grape growers, who produce to sell to winemakers, are geared for quantity," he says, "and Marlborough is superb for producing quantity without compromising quality. Our special place in the sun is understanding our surroundings and making the best wines we possibly can from them."

Even John Webber admits he no longer grows cabernet grapes in Marlborough. "There simply aren't enough growing days. You can't get them to ripen."

Back at Harrier Rise on that delectable Sunday, two rows of merlot seem something of an achievement as our team of pickers troops over the willow-fringed footbridge to the house and cellar side of the business.

Brian, with Harris' 18-year-old son, Nicholas, and two keen and capable pre-teens, loads the brimming bins onto the tractors, then tips them into an ingenious machine which, working by centrifugal force, separates grapes from stalks. Within seconds the stalks are lying in a tidy heap while the grape juice is pulsating into a 3m-high stainless-steel vat.

Harris offers us a glass and we gulp it down. At less than 1 per cent alcohol, bright scarlet, sweet but thirst-quenching, it is just what we need before switching to the serious Harrier Rise wines before our rather late, very long, lunch.

And no, there won't be any grape-treading, Harris gently tells us, socks or no socks. Instead, our grapes will stay in the vat for four to five weeks, fermenting gently in self-produced carbon dioxide. The skins that give the merlot its colour will rise to the top of the vat and become a crust so hard Harris will be able to walk on it.

Twice a day he or Jeremy will percolate fermenting wine from the bottom of the vat into the top, to extract every last drop of purpley colour and tannin flavour out of the skins. Even after fermentation finishes the wine will stay in the vat with the skins. "This stage transforms the nature of the tannin from aggressive to a smooth and pervasive character that gives my wine its style. It's something the French do but the Australians [with their big bouncy reds] don't."

Only then will Harris drain the vat, press the skins, which produce a sort of essence, mix the resulting liquids back together, then pump the "cloudy, murky liquid" into a clean tank to go through the malo-lactic stage of fermentation, when bacteria convert malic acid, which tastes like green apples, to lactic acid, which is softer, more like yoghurt or junket.

"You can't bottle wine until that happens because it's still generating carbon dioxide which blows the corks out of the bottles."

Only after nine to 12 months in oak barrels does Harris "fine" the wine with eggwhites, which removes any remaining sediment, and send it to be bottled. Even then there's still a while before the wine is ready for drinking. "I like to put it into the bottle when it's still quite raw but hold it for a year before it's sold."

Back at the lunch, our pickers are more than happy with their well-aged, French-style vintages. There we sit in our grape-stained shorts, T-shirts and hats, gathered around tables set with white damask cloths and a promising array of glasses, eating fried local aubergine (two for a dollar down the road), tomato and olive salads, minted potatoes, sausages and barbecued steak, sipping on Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Monza Cabernet.

This is Harris' dream come true. After 15 years he has 15 acres under grapes. Last year he gave up his day job as a corporate lawyer with Davenports once and for all. Now, with the vineyards of Harrier Rise stretching into the distance, the Brajkovich's immaculate Kumeu River vines on the other, Jason Kerr of Kerr Farm to the west, a couple of acres of Joe Corbans' grapestock in the distance and six beautifully bred eventing horses grazing just over the fence, the view is like a postcard from Bordeau.

Harris swirls the last of his 1999 Monza Cabernet in his glass. "All we need now is for your vintage to turn out as good as this one. It's the smallness of the crop that gives one of my vintages its character - and judging by your pick today, we're heading in the right direction."