“The 2021 Wandering Vines Pinotage is the wine that we drank to see in 2024. Its plush taste and the fact that it resonated with the wonderfully relaxing break we had in the Bay of Islands made it a very special wine,” writes wine columnist RICHARD CALVER. 

Kerikeri is in the Bay of Islands on the North Island of NZ and seven of us, family and hangers-on, went to stay there over the New Year period in a large house surrounded by a splendid garden.  

We hadn’t planned to visit any wineries, as we only had four days there, albeit that the Bay of Islands is the original home of winemaking in NZ.

The first vineyards were planted in 1819 by missionary Samuel Marsden in Kerikeri and nearby Rangihoua, Russell and Waitangi.  

Wine production now is a small percentage of the local economy. 

It’s amazing how much food and wine seven people consume on holiday and, in search of fresh produce after two days of indulgence, we headed to the Kerikeri farmers’ market on the Saturday before New Year’s Eve. 

The market was small, funky and interesting, especially as I was approached by two people to congratulate me on the message on my T-shirt, a present from my sister: It’s weird being the same age as old people.

The coffee stall was crowded but worth the wait. Just down from the coffee vendor was a small table on which was arranged red wine for taste presented by Wandering Vines.  

Claire Pearson, one of the owners, urged us to taste the wine, especially the pinotage, which is a grape variety normally associated with South Africa.  

Say it quickly and the name makes you think of pinot noir but even though related to that varietal, it is darker and bolder than this element of its parentage.  

The other parent is the variety cinsaut known as “hermitage” in the 1920s South Africa where it was successfully fused with pinot noir by a viticulture professor, Abraham Izak Perold, who apparently forgot about this genetic experiment.  

Hence, the first commercial plantings of this varietal weren’t made in South Africa until the early 1940s.  

Part of the South African experiment was to make a wine that is easier to cultivate than pinot noir and this ease of growing was one of the reasons that Claire and her husband Richard decided to plant a very small winery with predominantly pinotage grapes. 

The most recent of the vintage on taste was the 2022, which was a tannin hit but the 2021 appealed with its complex, savoury flavours with a bright fruit/tannin burst on the back of the palate.  

The only vineyard that I’m aware of that grows pinotage in this country is Ravenscroft Wines based in the Granite Belt in Queensland. 

The Australian Wine Research Institute says there are at least seven pinotage wine producers in Australia (New England, Granite Belt, Riverland, Alpine Valleys, Yarra Valley and Geographe).  

I haven’t tasted the Ravenscroft but in the 1990s I tried a South African pinotage that a then fellow academic had brought back from a visit to that country. At the time he raved over the ripe fruit forward taste of the wine and its great value-for-money.  

I didn’t buy any of the Wandering Vines Pinotage, but my brother-in-law did. He was enamoured of this wine because of its long finish and pleasant association with the experiences of beach and waterfalls and the bonhomie at the farmers’ market. 

The 2021 pinotage is the wine that we drank to see in 2024. Its plush taste and the fact that it resonated with the wonderfully relaxing break we had in the Bay of Islands made it a very special wine. 

As I age (unfortunately not like a fine wine) I can look back on a lovely family experience made better by an unusual but good wine. 

“I’m not old, I’m just chronologically gifted” –Anon