Kumeu River Wineries and Muriwai

Having had such a great time on the Hunter Valley Wine Tour at the end of December, we decided to take a similar tour to see (and taste!) how things are done differently in New Zealand.

From the moment we shook hand with John, our guide for the day, we knew this was going to be rather different to our experience in Australia.  While our Aussie guide has us singing along to songs from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, John takes things a lot more seriously, and spent much of the day describing – in considerable detail – how New Zealand’s policy-makers, law enforcement agencies and environmentalists are doing a better job than just about every other nation on the planet at conservation.

This ranged from a discussion (/ lecture!) on the role played by the New Zealand navy in deterring illegal fishing activities, to the country’s refusal to permit mining of almost any kind (despite speculation that it may be sitting on a considerable gold reserve).

He’s definitely passionate, and definitely knowledgeable.  Great to listen to… provided that you can insert some healthy cynicism into what is otherwise a rather one-sided view of the the world!

Of course, we were on a tour to learn about wine, and this was certainly a subject where John’s passion and knowledge were indisputable.  This was demonstrated during our first stop of the day, at the Kumeu River Winery, where John gave us a guided tour of the facilities, describing every step of the wine-making process from the sourcing of vines (all of which were imported from Europe originally) right through to bottling.

Though some of the machinery is used for just a week or two each year (and not while we were there, since the harvest was still a few weeks away), we got a very hands-on and animated explanation from John of how everything works, starting with the press that’s used for extracting juice from grapes.  It’s the settings on the press that will determine whether you eventually produce white or red wine: for white wine, just the juice is retained, whilst for red wine, the skin and often also the seeds are retained until much later in the process.

Next we saw the containers that are used for fermenting various styles of wines.  The cylindrical metal ‘vats’ are used for whites that don’t require oaking.  The cubic vats that look like industrial washing machines are used for red wines.  Over time, the solids (skin and seeds) fall to the bottom, and so, every six hours (including throughout the night), someone must stir the contents.  The barrels – costing upwards of £1500 each – are imported from France and are of course used for oaking.  Although the barrels are filled to the brim and sealed, the wood still “breathes” and, over time, some of the liquid will evaporate, requiring the barrels to be regularly topped up.

At the end of the production line is bottling and then the machine which prints and attaches labels.  Whilst the front label for a single batch of a particular wine will be identical on every bottle, the back label will vary depending upon what country the bottles are being exported to.

Kumeu River is a highly-rated winery and before we began the tasting, John warned us that the wines we’d be tasting here would be better than anything else on offer later in the day.  And was he right!  The Pinot Grigio and Chardonnays were especially good, but we’d happily have walked away with any of the wines we tasted… and it wasn’t even midday yet!

During the afternoon we visited two further wineries, but there was nothing particularly note-worthy to mention aside from one wine smelling and tasted bizarrely like Turkish Delight!

On the way back to Auckland, we drove through countryside that could easily have been mistaken for central England.  That is, until we hit the coast at Muriwai, and came across black sand beaches that I am not sure you would find anywhere in the UK.  There’s a gannet colony here from August to May each year, and this year, it’s been joined by a lone Red Footed Boobie who should have been off on a tropical island somewhere but has obviously lost his way!