Stillwater's first vineyard

Visited a brand new winery in the brand new area of Stillwater 30 minutes north of Auckland on the east coast. Paul Syms was sales and marketing director of a large English plastic company until he headed south to pursue his passion for wine. Syms built a house at Stillwater before realising that the neighbouring land offered a perfect vineyard site. Being a man of action he sold his house, bought the land next door, built another house, planted a seven-acre vineyard and built a winery – the last two with a little help from the owner of Providence Vineyard, Jim Vuletic.

Vines were planted in 2005 with the first harvest in 2008 (currently still in barrel). The vineyard is planted equally in Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Merlot. I visited the winery shortly before the arrival of bottling equipment (the first wines will be bottled in a couple of months).

A tasting of barrel samples revealed three impressive varietal wines – ripe flavours, good ripe tannins and nice acidity. Also tasted a test-blend of all three, which I preferred to any of the component wines, good though they are. This is a very serious wine in the making.

Syms plans to charge aound $60-70 a bottle – a fair price if my assessment is anything go by. There are no plans to run a cellar door although visitors will be welcomed if they make an appointment.

Paul and Cathy Syms

This entry was posted on Friday, February 26th, 2010 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Auckland, Blended reds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.