I don’t intend to write an epic about every wine that I find delicious. With changes a-swell, though, Pyramid Valley Vineyards on New Zealand’s South Island exhibits a positive future in wine industries of the New World (New Zealand, North America, Australia, South Africa, etc.).
Those who think that New Zealand’s only contribution to the global wine world is mass quantities of grassy, grapefruity, cat pee-y Sauvignon Blanc, should prepare to have your world turned upside down. It’s true that there are some tasty times to be had under the glass of New Zealand SB, but, for now, let’s leave that to the big guys. As forward-thinking but tradition-revering winemakers are exposing promise all over the New World, Marlborough’s new school stands poised to make waves in their push for differentiation.
Enter, Mike Weersing of Pyramid Valley Vineyards. The Northern California native’s resume displays an impressive list of stints in some of the most storied appellations throughout Germany, France, Spain, Australia and Oregon. Mike and his wife Claudia travelled to New Zealand in 1996, when Mike began making wine with Tim and Judy Finn at Neudorf Vineyards in Nelson. At this moment the search began to find the future site of their own vines. After much research, several trips and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to find that perfect piece of land in the winegrowing regions of California, Mike returned his sights to New Zealand’s South Island. What ensued were countless cross-island trips in the cozy confines of Mike’s VW bus, before finally settling on a piece of land in the Pyramid Valley. This is where they would eventually plant the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vines of their “Home Vineyard.”
Mike and Claudia spent the subsequent years meticulously guiding their plantings to maturation. Not yet ready to yield a viable crop from their holdings, Mike focused on a different project. Partnerships were born of new relationships with some of Marlborough’s most talented and discerning artisans. “We felt motivated to see recognition given to New Zealand’s grapegrowers, who have played so critical a role in the ascension and the growing acclaim of their country’s wine, but who so rarely receive due credit. How fun, and how just, we thought, to give these craftspeople a chance to show off their site and their skill. The basic arrangement is simple: we lease a chosen area of a grower’s vineyard, at a value set by the average income yielded by that area. We then, at our own cost, introduce a long list of operations geared to ensuring superior grape quality: shorter pruning, bud rubbing, shoot thinning and positioning, leaf plucking, fruit thinning, hand harvesting, and sorting or multiple passes at harvest if necessary. All work is done by hand.” What followed was the advent of the Pyramid Valley Vineyards “Grower’s Collection.” With rare exception Mike and his wife tend their leased holdings themselves. At the Calvert Vineyard on Felton Road, they’ve left the duties with longtime vineyard manager Gareth King, whose longstanding, stellar reputation fits right in line with Mike’s standards.
Over shared stories of wild adolescence and neighbors who hunt rabbits with hatchbacks, coupled with copious amounts of crusty bread, pungent cheese, and racy wine, Mike told one particular story that caught my immediate attention. It was of a grapegrower who had always sold his crop of Semillon to the big Sauvignon Blanc houses in Marlborough. It was Mike who convinced Mr. Hille that the superb qualities of his farm, and his rigorous attention to traditional farming practices, rendered produce well suited to being bottled on its own. Mike purchased rights to a small parcel and bottled it as a 100% Semillon from Marlborough. That night I tasted two vintages of the wine a year apart, the more youthful having characteristic herbiness. The older of the two already showed signs of maturation with delicious flavors of honeyed citrus and tones of spice that seemed to spin like a vibrant color wheel on top of a lanolin-like, mouth-filling texture…… DE-Licious! While you could mimic this maturation with decanting, I’d recommend letting the wine do its thing in the glass. It was intriguing that the more youthful version changed so much and so quickly. The story continued with the telling of Mike returning to the farmer with a bottle that read Pyramid Valley Vineyards Growers Collection “Hille Semillon.” Moved with emotion, Mr. Hille told Mike that he had never tasted or seen a wine made from his grapes. Everything that he had grown in the past was purchased and shipped off into the cosmos.
The other day I was in the market and noticed a bottle of Pyramid Valley Grower’s Collection 2005 Lebecca Riesling on the shelf. Compelled to purchase it, I did not hesitate with my selection. This was a wine that did not disappoint. Although it held itself in a manner that could easily be confused with a German Spätlese, this Riesling is clearly of its own unique place. Full of stony minerality, there are a host of penetrating flavors: pear, lemon oil, sweet wildflowers, honey, and Island spices. There is a fair amount of residual sugar balanced by a lighting bolt of acidity.
The story is of the new world and a promising future for regions seeking a unique identity. The subject is a wine that is supremely delicious and deserves to be sought out. I hope that you will continue to try some of the offerings from a new class of winemakers around the world. How beautiful it is to see artisans making a product that, while of a new geography, hearkens to the focus to tradition that we’ve all grown to love and expect in the Old World.
We love the Grower’s collection and can’t wait to try wines from the Home Vineyard, biodynamically farmed since inception!
“Because we know and trust our fruit, we are confident allowing our wines largely to make themselves.”
“Mike studied oenology and viticulture in Burgundy, beginning at the Lycee Viticole in Beaune, and continuing at the Universite de Bourgogne in Dijon. He has worked extensively in the vineyards and cellars of Europe, for producers such as Hubert de Montille, Domaine de la Pousse d’Or, and Nicolas Potel in Burgundy; Jean-Michel Deiss and Marc Kreydenweiss in Alsace; and Ernst Loosen in the Mosel. He has made wine in France and in Spain for Randall Grahm of Bonny DoonVineyards, vinifying in the Rhone Valley, the Languedoc–Roussillon, and the Navarra. New world vintages include apprenticeships with James Halliday at Coldstream Hills in the Yarra Valley of Australia, and with Russ Raney at Evesham Wood in Oregon’s Eola Hills.”
Pyramid Valley Vineyards Grower’s Collection Lebecca Riesling
Purchased at Bi-Rite Market on 18th St. in San Francisco, CA
$17.99
Excerpts taken directly from the Pyramid Valley Vineyards website appear in italics.
Imported by: Terra Firma Wine Co.
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