Bilancia: The cult winery in search of perfect balance

A young winemaker couple: one Kiwi, one Australian, both born under the star sign Libra. Both had a deep love of Italy and shared a dream of making their own wine. Work had taken them around the globe, but a job in New Zealand called them home.

They lost no time in securing land and planted their dream vineyard. Unlike most people in New Zealand, they planted on a hill. They called their venture Bilancia – because it was the name of their star sign and what they aspired to in their wine: balance and harmony.

They called the Syrah-based wine they made from 2002 onwards La Collina, Italian for ‘little hill’, after the name of the vineyard. It has since become a New Zealand icon.

Tasting notes and scores from a vertical of La Collina listed below

The couple are Melbourne-born Lorraine Leheny and New Zealander Warren Gibson. They met at Roseworthy College in South Australia. Farmers’ son Gibson had no truck with his family’s dairy and orchard business, but knew wine was going to be his career.

Leheny had come to do a postgrad in wine after qualifying in food technology. They moved to Auckland together, but ‘for the next four years, he was everywhere but New Zealand’, Leheny jokes about her husband’s stints as flying winemaker in Hungary, Italy and Australia.

For a while, the couple worked together in Margaret River. ‘In mid-1995, Warren was offered the winemaking job at Trinity Hill in Hawke’s Bay [a position he holds to this day which won him and his wines many accolades] and we’d always said that if we were going to make wine in New Zealand, Hawke’s Bay would be the place,’ Leheny remembers.

Putting down roots

‘We came here in 1997 and this is where we have been ever since,’ she adds. They bought land in 1997 and started planting in 1998. However, this involved terracing the hill first and doing most work by hand – which continues to this day.

‘It is not so unusual,’ says Gibson about farming on hillsides. ‘But you can see why people don’t want to do it. As we become older, it becomes more difficult,’ he adds.

La Collina is planted on Roys Hill, a sandstone ridge with some limestone covered in clay. Facing north, it’s 80m higher than the surrounding flat land and the famous Gimblett Gravels that spread northwards from the hill towards the Ngaruroro River.

These are metre-deep deposits of incredibly well-drained gravel. But La Collina is different.

‘Realistically, the climate is the same in terms of temperature and rainfall,’ Gibson explains. ‘But the soil is completely different, the aspect is completely different and there is the wind. We are completely sheltered from the south, mostly the west, completely exposed to the north, protected from the east. Everything is different apart from temperature and rainfall. So soil, aspect and wind are the three things that distinguish La Collina,’ he adds.

Passion project

Gibson also prefers to talk of the number of vines rather than acreage, as the 4,500 Syrah vines are spaced more widely on the terraces. ‘Looking back, we probably wouldn’t have planted the vineyard, because it enslaved us for the past 25 years,’ he says with a straight face, as Leheny laughs at their folly.

‘Our son was born in January 1998,’ Leheny adds. ‘We came to Hawke’s Bay in 1997 and by the end of 1998, we had a business, a child, a vineyard. We had put much off, but we decided we are here now, this is what we’re going to do.’

They do not have to spell it out – you can see on their faces that their project was and still is hard work. They have no employees.

‘Part of accepting the job as winemaker at Trinity Hill was the deal that we would be able to use their facilities to make our own wine,’ continues Leheny. ‘We were very lucky in that regard.’ Bilancia wines are still made at that winery.

‘We have our own barrels, our own tanks,’ says Gibson. ‘Our own operating systems,’ adds Leheny. ‘It is run as a separate business as opposed to a contract facility. After 28 years it’s still working well, so there is no reason to change that.’

Future and past

Bilancia is, in effect, a little, self-financed boutique operation. When I ask the couple what the future holds for La Collina after 28 years on the land, Leheny responds. ‘Our plan is to continue. We don’t have any plans to stop making wine. We’re still working in the vineyard. Right now, we are looking forward to selling 2024 which is still in barrel.’

Going back in time, 2002 was the first vintage of La Collina released. ‘2002 was a good season and the vines were still young, but we felt it was time to get going,’ Gibson says. ‘We released it at NZ$80 which was quite a statement,’ he adds.

To warrant the quality of their flagship wine, the duo did not make it the following year. Indeed no Collina was made in 2003, 2011, 2012, 2017, 2022 and 2023 – sometimes due to frost, sometimes due to cyclones that batter the east coast of New Zealand in March and April when grapes are harvested.

The wines are all mostly Syrah-based, some of them have small additions of Viognier, some of Viognier and Mourvèdre. La Collina is sometimes fermented with whole bunches, while the length of oak ageing and the amount of new oak is determined each vintage afresh.

The wines below were tasted in a little pod overlooking La Collina in February 2024 with Gibson and Leheny. They showed what a special site for Syrah this is, what a legacy they created and how intuitive their approach is to expressing this site.

Bilancia vertical: Tasting notes

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