Visiting
New Zealand's
wine regions
Part 5: The Millton Vineyards, New Zealand's biodynamic
pioneer
James Millton (above) is well known as one of
the leading ‘new world’ proponents of biodynamics. This is the
agricultural system that’s effectively a supercharged version of
organics, with some extra stuff thrown in. [More on that later.]
When I was planning my trip to New Zealand, he was always high up
on my list of who to visit. I’m fascinated by biodynamic wine
growers, not necessarily because I agree with all the theory
behind what they do, but because they just seem to make more
interesting wines.
Millton is in the Gisborne region, which is part of New
Zealand’s North Island. To reach it, I flew into Napier (Hawkes
Bay) and then drove a hire car for 2.5 hours around some rather
bendy roads. I was pressed for time, so I made a quick
calculation: if you take the bends at 10-15 km/h above the speed
advised by the road signs, you’ll be OK.
Gisborne is a slightly anonymous region. It’s quite
damp, and not known as a fine wine zone – instead, most of the
vineyards here are geared up for making large volumes for the big
boys. A lot of sparkling wine material comes from here. This is
why it’s especially remarkable that Millton makes such good
wines, using biodynamics, in a place where you’d expect the
disease pressure to be high, and one that’s not known for top
wines. ‘We take lots of risks by not using herbicide and
fungicide’, says James Millton.
So I turned up, and straight away there was a pair of
wines to try. The wine was called Les Trois Enfants, a blend of
Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris and Riesling. The first bottle was
screwcapped; the second sealed with a cork. Were they different?
Yes. ‘The wine we corked tastes like the wine we bottled’,
concluded James.
Millton Les Trois Enfants 2007 Gisborne
(screwcapped) Very bright, open nose is grapey, rich and quite fat, with
some melon and spice. The palate is fresh with a spicy edge. Quite
broad, with a minerally finish, this is the brightest of the two
wines. 90/100
Millton
Les Trois Enfants 2007 Gisborne (cork sealed) A bit tighter, with smooth, taut aromatics. Grape and spice in
the background. The palate is rich, full, smooth and fruity with
lovely texture and intensity. 92/100
Rainbow
over Clos Ste Anne
Then
it was time for some crazy stuff. James warned me that I might
wish to leave at this stage. He produced two wines – again, the
same wine, but one bottle of which had been standing overnight on
a mat made up of small pyramid shapes. I thought there might have
been a difference between the wines, but I couldn’t be sure, and
there’s certainly no theoretical reason why the wines should be
different. The wine was Millton’s top Pinot Noir, and it was
gorgeous.
Naboth's
vineyard, Clos Ste Anne
Millton
Clos de Ste. Anne Pinot Noir ‘Naboth’s Vineyard’ 2005
Gisborne
Lovely aromatic nose of cherry, herb and spice. Beautifully
perfumed. The palate is supple and cherryish with some real earthy
depth, as well as a hint of forest floor. An elegant, fresh style
of Pinot with real complexity. 93/100
Some
background on The Millton Vineyards. ‘I’ve been doing
biodynamics now for 23 years’, says James, who started the
Millton Vineyard in 1984, when he was 28. His wife Annie’s
father had developed vineyards on his Opou estate in Gisborne, and
so when James and Annie decided they wanted to establish their own
winery, this was the obvious place to start. It’s fascinating
that they’ve managed to make such interesting wines from a
region that no one thinks much of. ‘Gisborne, with its clay
soils, is acknowledged as making wines with full, fat fruit’,
says James, ‘but I’m looking for minerality’. He’s
surprised that there’s so little interest in Gisborne on the
part of other New Zealand winemakers. ‘I’m confused about why
people don’t want to lean over the fence and have a look’, he
says. But there’s lots of interest from outside New Zealand,
with people from all over the world coming to Millton to see what
is going on.
The
estate now consists of four different vineyards in the Gisborne
region, which James describes as ‘consistently inconsistent’.
‘We get vintage variation’, he adds, ‘and I think that’s
good thing’. Opou, a
7.7 hectare vineyard, was planted in 1969, and then replanted in
1983. Young vines are being interplanted with old, and the idea is
that if a row of new vines is planted between the old then the
spacing will be better – originally it was 3 m × 1.8 m (2500
vines hectare), and the goal is to get it to 1.5 × 1 m (6000
vines/hectare). Te Arai
vineyard is near this: it’s 2.8 hectares, and within it are two
‘clos’, named Samuel (Viognier) and Monique (Chenin) after
James and Annies’ kids. Riverpoint
is a 6.8 hectare vineyard growing Chardonnay and Viognier,
while the jewel in the crown for Millton is the spectacular Naboth’s
Vineyard, a steep hillside vineyard first producing in 1993.
This site has been developed to include five different parcels,
which together make up the Clos de Ste. Anne estate. Altogether
there are now 30 acres here (approximatel 15 hectares), which
takes the total Millton Vineyard holdings to about 30 hectares.
A short video
of the Clos Ste Anne vineyards
Compost
at Millton
Biodynamics
What
about biodynamics? To someone with a scientific mind, this
increasingly popular form of winegrowing looks a bit strange.
There are the usual organic principles: no herbicides, no
pesticides (although copper and sulphur are allowed as
‘natural’ fungicides) and no inorganic fertilizers, but in
addition a range of special preparations are used, and then either
sprayed on the vines or added to the compost heaps that are an
important aspect of this way of farming. In some cases these
preparations are used at homeopathic dilutions; in all cases they
are ‘dynamized’ by stirring in a particular way, and James has
his own device for doing this. These preparations are applied
according to the timings set out in the biodynamic calendar. The
same calendar dictates when certain jobs in the vineyard and
winery are carried out. Of course, there’s a bit more to
biodynamic than a few sprays and organics: it’s a philosophical
system that growers tend to embrace, and which then guides all
their practice. I suppose the fundamental principle is for farmers
to work in a way that is sensitive to the forces of life, and that
encourages a healthy, living soil.
On
my visit, I got a glimpse of biodynamics in action. First, there
were the cows. Until a few years ago James used to collect manure
from a biodynamic farm. But then he decided to buy his own cows,
and bought six six-week old calves. He’s now had three lots of
calves with these cows, and they make his manure. James enjoys
having the herd. ‘They rationalize my feelings’, he says.
‘They know when I’m cross and when I’m happy. Since
they’ve been here the whole vineyard has changed. It seems to
have a spring warmth to it, and the distraction they provide is
quite positive’. The manure the cows produce is used for
making compost, as well as being used in some of the preparations.
The
second glimpse was mixing and spraying one of the preparations,
BD501. This is a silica (ground quartz) preparation that is buried
in a cow’s horn, later dug up and then after mixing with water
is sprayed on the vines. To do this, we had to get up at 6 am
after a reasonably late night, but it was worth the effort. On a
beautiful morning, with the sun poking through the trees, I
watched James add a small amount of the white powder preparation
to a barrel of water (above). The liquid was pumped through a
Heath-Robinson-esque device that stirred the mixture one way and
then another as it flowed through, thus ‘dynamizing’ BD501,
making it ready for spraying on the foiliage of the vines (see
video below).
The
third was the process of digging up cow’s horns, which we did
later that morning. High up in Naboth’s vineyard, a few vines
had been marked. James and his team dug, until they hit the cache
of horns that had been buried here a few months earlier. Inside
each of these horns was the preparation BD500. This is cow manure
from lactating cows which is then placed in the horns for a
subsoil sojourn. The resulting prep is a smooth clay-like paste
that is then diluted and sprayed onto the vineyard soil, to
encourage microbial growth.