Viticulture
The Ata Rangi team farm around 32 hectares, spread over 14 vineyards clustered around the village of Martinborough. The sites feature the characteristic Martinborough Terrace profile of 300-600mm of shallow silt-loam overlaying 25-30 metre-deep alluvial gravels. The McCrone and Masters Vineyards are differentiated by a higher percentage of clay within the gravels.
Ata Rangi’s home vineyards attained full organic status in 2014. Weeds are managed with under-vine weeding tools, with a combination of cultivation and mowing. Our vineyards’ biodiversity is enhanced by a mixture of native and exotic shelterbelts and inter-row wildflower planting that provide havens for native predatory and beneficial insects. We make compost on site from grape stalks, skins, and yeast lees, mixed with seaweed, forest floor duff and harvested green crops. This mix is utilised in the vineyard to make compost tea for vine health and boost organic matter within the soil.
Our dedicated vineyard team does all vine work by hand from pruning in winter through to harvest in autumn.
We draw our fruit from a diverse range of vineyards, each managed to suit its soil and clonal diversity. This individualised care, alongside the age of the original vines which are now reaching 40 years old, are both major factors in the quality and consistency of our wines from year to year. Spring is often cool and windy which reduces fruit set, so yields are naturally low. Summer days are consistently warm, though nights are generally cool. Autumn is often long and dry, perfect for hand harvesting.
Abel clone - a piece of history
In 1980 Ata Rangi founder Clive Paton was looking for Pinot Noir cuttings to plant on his newly purchased 4.9 hectare plot. Neil McCallum of Dry River, who wasn’t planting Pinot Noir himself at that time, pointed Clive towards an Auckland vineyard owned by Malcom Abel, where an interesting clone was growing. One phone call later, Clive had secured the bud wood for the first Pinot Noir plantings at our Home Block.
The following year, Clive volunteered to work a vintage for Malcolm. Sharing a passion for making exceptional Pinot Noir, the two quickly became close friends. It was during that first harvest that Clive discovered the remarkable story behind the cuttings he’d planted at Ata Rangi a year earlier.
Their journey began in the mid-1970s, when a small bundle of vine cuttings were intercepted at Auckland Airport. Malcolm was working as a customs officer at the time, and was involved in questioning the young traveller carrying them. It turned out that the canes had come from one of Burgundy’s finest estates.
Recognising their potential, Malcolm sent the cuttings straight to Te Kauwhata, which was the state-owned viticulture research station at that time. He waited patiently for the first cuttings to become available, planted them in West Auckland, and established a two-acre vineyard of his own.
McCrone Vineyard
The McCrone Vineyard was planted by Don and Carole McCrone who own a pinot noir vineyard in Yamhill, Oregon, supplying one of the region’s foremost pinot producers, Ken Wright Cellars. In the late 1990s, their desire to replicate the single vineyard concept in the southern hemisphere led them to research New Zealand regions and producers, eventually purchasing a 4-hectare block just across the road to the east of the Ata Rangi Home Block.
Drawing on Ata Rangi’s two decades of experience, it was planted in 2001 with a mix of pinot noir clones that have become part of the Ata Rangi fabric: Abel or ‘Gumboot’ clone, Dijon selections (115 and 777) and Clone 5. This provided not only a proven mix but allowed the differences in the sites to come to the forefront. Here, clay from ridges either side of the vineyard, fan out through the gravels. The vineyard was purchased from the McCrone’s in October 2012 and certified organic in 2014.
The first Single Vineyard release of the McCrone Pinot Noir was in 2006.
Kotinga Vineyard
The Kotinga Vineyard was established in 2000 by Roger Gaskill, at the eastern end of Puruatanga road. The site’s soil is entirely free draining alluvial gravels with no clay influence. It was planted in a selection of pinot noir Dijon clones 777 (1.28 hectare), 115 (0.86 hectare) and 667 (1.07 hectare). Ata Rangi took over this vineyard in 2015, then purchasing it in 2017. We completed the transition to fully organic in 2018 and since then we have seen more aromatically pure ferments and the once strident tannins now well balanced.
The first release of this Single Vineyard wine will be from the 2020 harvest.
Masters Vineyard
Planted in 2001 by Di Beatson and Carolyn O’Conner this site was aptly named Seriously Nuts. Di and Carolyn were weekend warriors who turned a bare piece of land into a vineyard. Originally they had thought they would plant nut trees, hence the name. Ata Rangi began sourcing this fruit in 2007, and it was purchased by our Winemaker Helen Masters and her husband Ben in 2015 and is now called the Masters vineyard.
Situated on Lake Ferry road 4 kms south of the Martinborough Square. Here the clay is a more consistently mixed throughout the gravels compared to the ridges of clay that run through the vineyards to the north of the town. The more southerly position of the Masters Vineyard means that the fruit ripens around one to two weeks later than the other Ata Rangi sites. The 2.5 hectare vineyard is planted with Mendoza clone chardonnay and pinot noir clones Abel, Pommard and Dijon clones 115, 667 and 777. The vineyard was certified organic in 2020.
The first release of this single vineyard wine will be from the 2020 harvest.