Winemaker: Gibbston Valley Wines, Valli

June 2006: Winemaker Grant Taylor has left Gibbston Valley Wines after 14 years of crafting internationally successful wines. Grant has been described as "legendary" - his wines winning numerous medal and trophies, with the crowning glory being the Gibbston Valley 2000 Reserve Pinot Noir which was champion at the London International Wine Challenge.

Putting that behind him, Grant is looking forward to spending more time pruning in his own vineyard.

Grant launched his own wine brand, Valli, in 1998 and his previous vintages have been made from grapes sourced from Lowburn, Bannockburn, Gibbston and the Waitaki Valley.

His own vineyard in the Gibbston Valley produced 1500 cases of wine this last vintage. "I bought land in Gibbston because I thought it can make the best pinot noirs in Central Otago...Not in every year, but as Matt Kramer said: At their best, Gibbston makes the best pinots in Central Otago."

Grant says pruning the vineyard is his favourite part of winemaking. "It's the first step in the next vintage." His plans for the future include building a winery and maybe a house on his vineyard, doing more vintages abroad, and having more time to do fun things in NZ.

Grant says the highlight of his time at Gibbston was being part of a region that has become so successful. "When I got here there were 50 acres and five wineries. Now there are over 100 wineries and 3000 acres planted."

Kurow-born-and-bred, Grant is excited about the future of the Waitaki Valley: "There's the opportunity there to re-live what's happened in Central Otago," he says.

Grant Taylor's love of winemaking and brewing goes back to his early childhood when his family had a ginger beer bug which it was his job to look after and feed. But he says its ironic that he now makes his living out of a practice that lost him his pocketmoney when he was at high school. North Otago born and bred, as a schoolboy Grant used the apples from a Granny Smith tree in the back yard to brew cider, which got him into big trouble with his parents.

But now with strings of national trophies and gold medals, as well as international trophies to his name, Grant has firmly established himself as one of Otago's and New Zealand's leading winemakers and pinot noir specialists.

His philosophy is simple. To produce Pinot Noir which expresses the region and terroir through fruit character.

"I want to make wines with power and complexity, but not at the expense of losing or masking the delicacy and style of the fruit. The fruit is paramount. Everything else - masceration temperature, the way we use oak, all the winemaking input in fact - is dictated by the ripeness and quality of the fruit. Our winemaking is a reaction to the grapes and the season."

Grant studied agriculture at Lincoln College (now Lincoln University) in Canterbury, New Zealand, where, in the mid-1970's, he and a small group of friends established a wine-tasting group in an otherwise predominantly beer-drinking environment.

After finishing his degree, he went to the United States, to the Napa Valley, to visit friends he'd met at university. He soon came to the conclusion that winemaking could be a good career for someone wanting to travel. The long hours at harvest time meant good money could be made quickly.

In 1980 he got a job at California's Pine Ridge winery as assistant winemaker, but when the winemaker left he was asked to stay on, and worked there winemaking with the owner, Garry Andrus (who now owns properties in the Gibbston Valley and Cromwell basin) until 1986. During that time Grant also studied winemaking at the University of California's Davis Agricultural College and Napa General College.

He spent another 6 years establishing a new winery, Domaine Napa, where he was sole charge winemaker before returning to New Zealand in 1993.

He still regularly works vintages in the northern hemisphere, either California, Oregon or Burgundy. "There's nothing better than taking three months off and turning up in the middle of Italy," he says.

Grant started with Gibbston Valley Wines in 1993, in the days when 90% of the fruit came from Marlborough. That left him to experiment with the small volumes of fruit from the Gibbston home blocks. "'95 was our first serious wine - we got a trophy for the Central Otago Pinot Noir - it helped put us on the map." (By then Gibbston Valley had been able to source grapes from other subregions of Central Otago). He's also brought to Gibbston Valley a string of awards for Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Chardonnay and Pinot Gris.

While Grant didn't make Pinot Noir wines in the USA, he believes the skills he learned there in blending varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot now help him in putting Reserve blends together - something which no-one can deny Grant is very good at.

While his Gibbston Valley Reserve Pinot Noir 2000 won international acclaim, taking the trophy at the London International Wine Challenge in 2001, Grant says he prefers the 2001 Reserve (just released), which is now one of the most sought after wines in New Zealand. This is the wine that has just won him a third consecutive gold medal a the world's largest wine competition. The London International Wine Challenge with almost 13,000 entries is considered to be one of the world's toughest. 350 judges are needed and each wine is judged twice before the top contenders for trophies are announced.

Grant's own label, Valli, now in its third release, is also proving to be popular and of high standard. This year he's released two pinot noirs, one from Bannockburn (Bald Hill) and the other from the Gibbston Valley (Colleen's Vineyard), and both are rated five star by Australian magazine Winestate.

"2001 was a great vintage in Otago - everything was fully ripe across all regions of Otago. Crop levels and ripeness were very consistent, so it's a very good vintage to look at the subregions." In other words, buy one of each and compare them, and you may start to observe the regional expression of terroir and fruit character.

While Grant currently sources grapes from other growers to make his Valli wines, he's also planted his own 3.5ha vineyard in the Gibbston Valley. Establishing his own label was proof of his commitment to the area and his belief in it as a premier Pinot Noir region, he says.

Rapid expansion in the wine industry here has been seen over the past five years, but Grant says the new phase now is people coming here with big American wine money and buying large tracts of land for building wineries and exporting wine to the USA. "Why are they here? It's because they've tasted the wine from here, and seen the quality that we can produce."

"The USA is one of the markets that, if Central Otago is flavour of the month, it can make us for ever. These people are movers, they are seriously professional," says Grant.

        

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