Maison Vauron Celebrates 25 Years As New Zealand’s Home Of French Wine & Cheese

The Maison Vauron team is celebrating 25 years of their much-loved French wine and food business, a hidden gem in Auckland’s Newmarket housing a well-stocked wine cellar, cafe, deli and events space. Founders Jean-Christophe Poizat, Scott Gray, and Peter Ropati reflect on where they started and where they’ve come.

They say if you know you know. But in the case of the supremely charming yet largely under-the-radar Maison Vauron, sometimes it’s a case of if you know, keep it a secret, says co-founder and director Jean-Christophe Poizat. Asked why the French wine cellar, cafe, deli and events space might not be top of everyone’s mind after 25 years in business, he jokes “People want to keep it a secret. We’ve got so many people who say ‘I’m not telling my friends because I don’t want to see everybody here!’. It’s just amazing.”

It’s not hard to see why they’re keeping this gem to themselves. On an industrial side street in Newmarket, Maison Vauron might be out of sight, but is easy to spot, with a blue-painted exterior decorated with a red awning, cheerful bunting and French flag indicating you’re in the right place. Once inside, the bustling cafe L’Atelier du Fromage reveals itself. Here, regulars enjoy a menu of French plates, led by chef James Genson, charcuterie and cheese boards and a cabinet filled with baguettes, croques monsieur, caneles and croissants. Next to the cafe, the deli is stocked with an extensive range of French cheese, housemade tapenade and chicken liver pate, olives, cornichons, crackers, condiments, caviar and escargot.

Upstairs is the atmospheric wine cellar, where thousands of French wines overflow from wine crates and line the orderly shelves with prices scrawled in chalk. Jean-Christophe is sitting at one of several long wooden tables imported from France, beautifully set for lunch, reflecting on a quarter century in the wine business. He’s surrounded by mementos from home, including family photos, maps of France’s wine regions and a string of hanging berets. Wine is in Jean Christophe’s DNA, with Maison Vauron named after his great-great-grandfather, the wine merchant Antoine Vauron, whose image is on the wall.

It was wine that brought him to New Zealand, having worked in hospitality in his hometown of Saint-Etienne and later as a wine merchant in England in the 80s, where he was first exposed to New Zealand wines. Wanting to know more about Aotearoa’s vineyards, he visited in 1991 and never left. “It just touched me, it was like crazy,” says Jean-Christophe, of the similarities between France and New Zealand. “Kiwis have an affiliation with France. I think it dates back to wartime, World War I and World War II. There’s just a very strong connection.” Cementing his new life in New Zealand was meeting his wife six months after hitting the wine trail.

It’s also where he met his two business partners and co-founders, Scott Gray and former rugby league player Peter Ropati. In the 90s they were three young guys working at Glengarry’s who discovered a shared passion for French wine and a vision to share it with New Zealanders. Feeling stifled by the glut of mass-produced wines and spirits, they saw a gap for small-scale boutique French wines “made more with a heart and soul”. They went out on their own, founding Maison Vauron in 1999. From the start their roles were clearly defined: Pete was the numbers guy, Scott had a deep knowledge of wine, handling logistics and buying, and JC had the passion for French food and wine, plus a hospitality superpower: a genuine connection with people.

The trio transformed an industrial warehouse in Grafton’s Boston Rd into a retail store, fitting it out with tall shelving and room for a small mezzanine office. Their early customers were born out of personal connections and word of mouth, and restaurateurs soon came calling, with the trade side of the business flourishing organically. They eventually outgrew the space, relocating to their two-storey Newmarket location in 2003 and opening a French deli downstairs, and later their own L’Atelier du Fromage cafe in 2015.

Keeping to a “niche” of French wine has been key to the business. “It’s a choice that we made 25 years ago to keep to what we know, and this is what we know,” says Jean-Christophe. “It’s easy to try to please everyone but at the same time you dilute things and from the start, this is what we wanted to do.”

The people who come through the door have the same thing in common: a love for French culture and food – and the staff at Maison Vauron are well placed to assist them. Their customers are “Francophiles, Francophones, food people, wine lovers and people looking for something different”, says Jean-Christophe. Aged from 25 to 90, they’re arriving with a specific aim in mind, whether that’s choosing a bottle of wine from the upstairs cellar, buying cheese from the deli, or joining someone for lunch over a few glasses of wine. “We know when people walk up why they’re here and we know they’re in the right state of mind to listen to our story.”

They can shop French wines from prestigious regions such as Bordeaux, Burgundy, and the Rhône Valley, with prices ranging from $16 to $20,000. Every wine is hand-picked from two or three-yearly trips to France, where the team tastes wines and meets with winemakers. The goal is to offer the best wine people can buy, as well as ensure an intimate understanding of where and how the wines are made, stories they’re happy to share with customers, whether that’s through tastings, events, or private dinners, all important facets of the offering, or just discussing a wine in-store. “It’s education”, says Jean-Christophe, but not in a technical, boring way, but rather transporting clients to where the wine is grown and made, who made them, or simply what food to enjoy the wines with.

The wines are strictly French, but there are wines in the cellar from New Zealand-based French winemakers, like Surveyor Thomson and Clos Henri, a tenth-generation wine-making family from the Loire Valley, both of which employ French wine-making practices on NZ soil or terroir. New wines come into the cellar “constantly”. “There’s always someone that we’re looking at or talking to in Europe,” says Jean-Christophe. “There’s a new wine from a month ago that I had to court for seven years”. With the amount of effort that goes into securing wines from France, it’s integral that Maison Vauron’s staff have the knowledge and passion to sell the wine locally. “And they have”, says Jean-Christophe, “It’s amazing”. “Peter always says it’s not about what you know, it’s about the attitude and if a person has the right attitude, you can teach them.”

The French cheese distribution arm, La Fromagerie, was introduced to the Maison in 2005. French cheese played a role in wine tastings for clients in the early days, and the team started importing a small amount. As people’s enjoyment of the cheese grew, the team began to bring in bigger volumes. “We thought if we’re doing the best French wine we might as well do the best cheeses,” says Jean-Christophe. They worked with French cheese expert Gilles Mereau to select styles that would be popular with a Kiwi palate, from Comte to Camembert, Brie to Roquefort, but also more adventurous cheeses, like Morbier, a pungent cow’s milk cheese made in the Jura Mountains. They’re on offer in the deli, as well as everything customers need to make a dream cheeseboard at home.

At Maison Vauron, customers are “absolutely everything”, says Jean-Christophe. “I learned very quickly when I was 15 that if you don’t have them you have nothing. We sincerely love them.” It’s why he can be found at the Maison every day, tending to one thing or the other. He’s been known to reply to texts at 10.30pm – “it never stops. It’s a business where it’s very much a people’s business and we get very, very close to our customers.”

That connection is also evident among the founders, with Jean-Christophe saying “There’s absolutely no way that I could have done it by myself. The three of us are so different to each other. We’ve all got our own specialty. In 25 years, we’ve never had an argument, because we complement each other so well.”

Adds Peter: “I think we all have such a deep respect for each other and have really accepted and respected our differences from the very start. All our skills are needed in this business, and it wouldn’t be where it is without all of us. It’s a true team effort.”

“The secret to longevity has been about bringing three quite different people together who understand what we want to do and where we want to sit in the market,” says Scott, “and then focusing on moulding this to service our clients in the very best [way] we can.”

At this point in the journey, they’re eyeing a succession plan, and have brought on Will Brunel Morvan as a shareholder and trade director, a Frenchman who has grown with the business and may be the new “face” in the future. Cellar manager Jean-Tristan Detoubet is another safe pair of hands, who recently led a lesson on French wine regions for Auckland Grammar School students for the first time. “I’ve been doing it forever”, says Jean-Christophe, “so it was a big thing.” Behind the scenes, Peter’s daughter, Alexandra Pringle, is the new marketing and communications director, with plans to refresh the website and help get the word out about the Maison’s incredible products.

Young people are the future, in terms of both staff and customers, says Jean-Christophe. Original customers’ children are now Maison Vauron shoppers, an exciting development that signals a promising next chapter. “We’re seeing more and more 25-year-olds because they might want to go straight to a better wine than a crappy wine. Maybe they’re looking for a wine to impress their partner’s parents.” It’s been a joy to see that knowledge filter down, and word of mouth in action.

But that element of surprise is still a drawcard. “People come here because it’s different. We’ve got a unique proposition. We’re like a little French corner – we have visitors who could take people to the best restaurants in New Zealand but they bring them here for an experience.” Well, the secret might just be out now.

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