My family have been farming this land, in the hills outside of Kerikeri, overlooking the beautiful Bay of Islands, since well before I was born.

In 2014, when I was 22, I took a job in viticulture here and moved home, finally pursuing a chance to do what I was passionate about in a place I was passionate about also. In an unrelated coincidence, my family had also just purchased a block of land bordering on our farm, in the middle of which was a block of bush. Exploring this bush one afternoon, my father and I were surprised to find a long abandoned garden, with grapevines, not having been pruned in likely 70 years, which had reverted to their wild state, growing to the tops of the canopy of Totara trees, and better still, they were loaded with delicious fruit.

It was at this point my father and I started to discuss the prospect of planting a vineyard on this land. When we put our mind to something we tend to put plans into motion fairly quickly, so within a few months we had planted approximately 1ha of vines, of multiple varieties, with the aim of discerning what varietals would be best suited to the site over the course of time.

As the years went by, I continued planting more, continuing to experiment, and as the vineyard grew, so too did my passion for wine, my skillset and my breadth of understanding for what was required to make truly singular fine wines from this special site that is our Home Block.

Not long after we started establishing the vineyard, I met Melika. Our first ‘date’ was spent planting vines in the vineyard, and within a year we started a family. Since then we’ve developed our Home Block together, with our 3 young children Remy, Marnie and Coco following close behind.

Over the years, we’ve found what works well on this site, and we’ve begun to understand how we might create unique and beautiful wines which are not only delicious, but also convey a sense of time and place, and reflect our beautiful site.

Jake