Wow, what a ride! Vintage 2017 was a challenging harvest, but one we’re excited to see expressed in our wines.

After an amazing start to the growing season, coupled with long warm summer days, we achieved good flavour development early on. 2017 was shaping up to look a lot like 2015 and 2016, but then New Zealand was hit by two tropical cyclones. We were already bringing in a lot of fruit by this stage, so thankfully we managed to avoid the worst of it.

Every vintage is different and each presents its own opportunities and challenges, however, as with every year we are always prepared for the eventuality of rain. This involves a judicious spray program in the growing season, careful canopy management, and assembling a crack team across both vineyard and winery for harvest.

As we get more experienced as a team, some of us have been working together for 13 years, we become more agile and able to adapt to the conditions in North Canterbury and comfortable letting the wine express the season.

We are looking forward to vibrant, fruit driven wines from the 2017 vintage – but we will let the wines speak for themselves when they are in your glass.

– Nick Gill (General Manager)

We’ve just finished a very long harvest with a very small batch of Riesling. I wanted to mention Riesling early on as this was the star of the vintage. Waipara’s iconic white variety hit its straps this year with a range of exquisite flavours amplified by areas of beautiful noble Botrytis. We expect the 2017 Rieslings to be keepers – but still delicious early on!

Our winery vintage team assembled from the far corners of the world this year. A fantastic collection of talented kiwis and some great people from France, Germany, Italy, Japan and China. The team was charged with sorting, pressing, fermenting and generally turning our organic fruit into beautiful wine. A winery team should be enthusiastic, skilled, strong and ready for long hours. They are there for each other to help load that last bin of Pinot Noir over the sorting table at Midnight, or drive the compost wagon to the pile in the dark after a 16 hour shift doing what they love. We share stories, wines and new vintage experiences, which live on long after the wines have been fermented bottled and enjoyed.

Keep an eye out for our 2017s from later on this year…..fine flavours and elegant in nature.

– Dom Maxwell (Winemaker)