Greywacke: Ten years on

You can't mention Greywacke without mentioning Cloudy Bay...

And mentioning Cloudy Bay brings history – the weight of New Zealand’s fate once seemingly hung on its shoulders.

Of course, brands such as Brancott and Villa Maria have more than played their parts in the high-volume arena, but Cloudy Bay was at the forefront of the country’s transformation into an international power in the ‘fine wine’ sphere, particularly in the case of its Sauvignon Blanc.

Now that its reputation is firmly in the bag – wine exports have been increasing every year for the last two decades and more, and New Zealand claims one of the highest average bottle prices of all wine-producing countries – certain winemakers have begun to explore alternative expressions of the styles the country’s success has been built on.

Enter Kevin Judd. The man who spent 25 years making Cloudy Bay – and therefore a key player in New Zealand’s formative years – established his own label, Greywacke, in 2009. He doesn’t own his own winery, instead making use of the facilities at Dog Point Winery in the lower Brancott Valley.

His label is named after the sedimentary greywacke pebbles which are evident in the main Rapaura vineyard but, as Kevin was keen to point out at a tasting earlier this week, ‘Greywacke isn’t about a bit of earth’. Asked how he selects his grapes, Kevin sums up the whole spirit of Greywacke in one sentence: ‘I do select, but there’s no recipe’. A winemaker who sits back and lets the wine do the talking.

And the results are intriguing. His winemaking may be seen as a brave step too far by some; if it ain’t broke, why try and fix it? However, his time at Cloudy Bay has clearly given him the freedom to experiment, and this is what he brings to Greywacke. The range of seven wines is a foray into a world of barrel-aged Rieslings, natural fermentations and just a bit of luck.

Kevin was in the UK to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Greywacke, and to mark the occasion we were treated to two examples of each of the seven wines – the first vintage of each wine, and the most recent. It was interesting to see not only how well they can age, but also how he has refined the winemaking processes for each after years of trial and error.

Greywacke: Then and now

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