8 minute read
Taste makers
Taste
MAKERS
WORDS: VENETIA SHERSON • IMAGERY: PETER DRURY
Winemakers at an historic Te Kauwhata winery are proud to follow in the footsteps of the man credited with inspiring viticulturists in New Zealand 120 years ago
See more of Invivo on our video:
www.youtube.com/HeritageNewZealandPouhereTaonga
Invivo winemaker Rob Cameron is not given to ostentation and hyperbole. He abhors wine snobs and the pretension that sometimes accompanies wine tasting. But put him in a dimly lit, cobweb-festooned room not much bigger than a double garage, where wines dating back more than half a century are having a lie-down, and he is in raptures.
“It’s like a library of wines,” he says, lifting from a rack a dusty Müller-Thurgau – a sweetish white wine popular in New Zealand in the 1960s. The contents would now be undrinkable, not only because of age, but also because New Zealanders’ tastes have matured. But Rob likes that it still has a place in the cellar.
In another room – a fermenting house dating back to 1903–4 – are huge concrete vats, the material of choice for European winemakers centuries before stainless steel tanks took over with their whizzy temperaturecontrol systems. In a third room – a vast, cool storehouse with lofty kauri ceilings – Rob’s smile broadens.
“My favourite place,” he says.
The room, which was the original wine cellar, is stacked with oval-shaped French oak barrels made from 200-year-old trees, some obtained as part of reparations from Germany after World War I.
“Each [barrel] tells a different story,” says the winemaker. He knows their provenance but remains in awe of their magic.
“They may look the same, but the results will still surprise you.”
It is in this cellar that Rob most feels the presence of his predecessor, the legendary and flamboyantly named 19th-century viticultural scientist Romeo Bragato – the man credited with assessing and inspiring the establishment of viticulture in New Zealand more than 120 years ago.
Bragato was based here for six years from 1902, often arriving late at night during the harvest with a supper of crackers, sardines, pickled olives and claret to oversee the mash.
He once wrote, “It is a fact beyond contention that – in wine-drinking countries – the people are amongst the most sober, contented and industrious on the face of the earth.” Rob thinks they would have got on well.
A Category 1 historic place, the winery occupies a small site on the edge of Te Kauwhata, formerly known as Wairangi (corrected to Waerenga in 1897), a European-style settlement established around a railway station in the 1870s.
1 Rob Cameron says Invivo’s winery is like a library of wines, recording New
Zealanders’ maturing wine tastes through the decades.
2 The cellar is a dimly lit space that lays out the story of winemaking through the decades.
3 The winery complex on the outskirts of
Te Kauwhata, where 19th-century viticulturist
Romeo Bragato worked his early magic.
It is just four kilometres from Rangiriri, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Waikato Wars, in which British troops seized more than 400,000 hectares of prized and productive Waikato land. In 1893 the Ministry of Agriculture established the Waerenga Experimental Station to test the suitability of the clay soils for crops, including vines.
When Bragato first came to New Zealand in 1895, he was a long way from home. According to information available on the Waikato District Council website, Bragato was born in 1858 on an Adriatic Island then known as Lussin Piccilo – at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – and now known as Mali Losinj in Croatia. His parents were Italian, and he studied at the Royal School of Oenology in Conegliano in the province of Treviso, Italy.
Bragato was overseeing the establishment of the wine industry in Victoria, Australia, when New Zealand premier Richard Seddon, under intense pressure from farmer settlers who wanted to develop a wine industry, invited him here.
After Victoria’s state government agreed he could take leave, Bragato arrived in Bluff and made his way north, immediately identifying the potential for viticulture in areas that are today
2
1
2
3 New Zealand’s leading wine-producing regions: Central Otago, Canterbury, Marlborough, Wairarapa (Martinborough), Hawke’s Bay and Auckland. He also visited the Waerenga station where grapes were then grown by the government pomologist, WJ Palmer.
Enthused by what he saw, in 1902 he accepted a position as the government viticulturist for the New Zealand Department of Agriculture, and set about improving the research station, including overseeing the construction of the Mediterranean-style concrete fermenting house and cellar, roofed with red tiles. A further cellar was added later.
Bragato’s passion and enterprise (he introduced American rootstocks resistant to the pest phylloxera, which had destroyed French vineyards in the 1870s) were quickly recognised locally and internationally. While production methods were crude by today’s standards (the grapes were rubbed off stalks with wooden graters), the results were award winning.
In 1908, six wines were entered in the FrancoBritish wine exhibition. Five won gold medals. The path to success seemed assured.
But by 1908 the government and growers had become nervous. The New Zealand Temperance Union had gained traction and there was uncertainty about the industry’s future. Vineyard planting slowed and the viticulture division of the Department of Agriculture was disbanded.
Bragato’s bold ideas for expanding the wine industry languished in a dusty government drawer. Disillusioned, he left New Zealand for Canada. The research station remained in government hands until 1992 when it was sold into private ownership including – from 2003 – to Rongopai Wines.
Four years later it was bought by BAA Holdings, and subsequently occupied by TK Vintners and Bottlers, which had a connection with longstanding winemakers, the Babich family.
When the winery came up for lease in 2016, Rob Cameron was delighted.
“Bragato was a legend. The winery’s history sat well with our values. We want to carry on its legacy as a top winemaker.”
Rob and his business partner Tim Lightbourne are from different backgrounds, but like a good wine, their blend of skills has been successful. Rob’s family are winemakers at Mangawhai Heads. He was a consultant winemaker in Europe, but always intended to return to New Zealand to expand the family winery.
Tim has a commercial background and an entrepreneurial head. When they met for a drink at a bar in Fulham, London, in 2007, the idea of a winery with a difference was hatched. They decided not to invest in more grapes; “Others can do that better,” said Tim.
In 2008 they launched Invivo, which means ‘in life’, at the winery in Mangawhai. Eight years later they moved the business to Te Kauwhata.
1 Some of the wines stored are now undrinkable, but they still have their place at the complex.
2 The original buildings still house remnants of winemaking from earlier times.
3 The distilling equipment includes a large copper still, which was used to make brandy in the 1950s.
4 Huge concrete vats, painted red, stand in contrast to the stainless steel vats installed when technology advanced.
To learn more about Invivo, view our video story here: www.youtube.com/ HeritageNewZealand PouhereTaonga
Their grapes are imported from other New Zealand regions. Rob does the alchemy; Tim does the pitch.
They have partnered with Irish television presenter Graham Norton (“He’s a great guy; loves our wine,” says Rob) and US actress Sarah Jessica Parker. Those names are on their brands and have helped gain the attention of UK and US markets.
Demand has now outstripped supply given a poor growing season last year, plus Covid-19-related supply issues. Despite this, Invivo is expanding, with plans for an extension to the winery in consultation with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.
The winery contains many of the original fixtures, including the red-painted concrete wine vats, the still tower, distilling equipment and the oak barrels. There is a large copper still, which was used to make brandy in the 1950s.
In his listing report for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, Senior Heritage Assessment Advisor Martin Jones says many elements of the complex, listed as Te Kauwhata Winery, are rare or unique in New Zealand.
“The complex is a reminder of government leadership in agricultural science and is the only substantial remnant of the experimental farm established in the 1890s.”
It is also a reminder of the journey of winemaking in New Zealand. The gold medals won by the station during Bragato’s tenure were extraordinary for a young country still learning the techniques of winemaking. But the growth of the industry and the standard of wines have increased beyond perhaps even Bragato’s dreams.
Rob says in his lifetime New Zealand’s winemaking reputation has become incontrovertibly established and admired, not only in Old World wine regions that have traditions dating back hundreds of years but also around the world.
“It would be unusual not to find a New Zealand sauvignon blanc or pinot noir on the wine list of a top restaurant in the UK and US,” he says.
This year, Invivo and its partners won three gold medals and two trophies at the 2021 New York International Wine Awards. Romeo Bragato would have been impressed.
And while that dusty Müller-Thurgau may no longer appeal to today’s tastes, it’s still a sweet reminder of just how far we have come.
