Pyramid Valley - North Canterbury

Mike and Claudia Weersing came to New Zealand in 1996, when Mike began making wine with Tim and Judy Finn at Neudorf Vineyards in Nelson. After a 5 year search to find a site for their own vineyard, they purchased a farm in the Pyramid Valley, near Waikari, North Canterbury, in 2000.

The home vineyard has been established according to rules that Mike grew to respect and inherently trust, during his time studying and working in Burgundy: Pinot Noir and Chardonnay have been planted on clay-limestone soils, on scarp slopes, at a density of 10,000-12,000 vines per hectare. The vineyard has been biodynamically managed from inception.

Whilst waiting patiently for their home vineyard to establish itself, an ambition to create a range of wines from other sites was realised.

When offered small amounts of Pinot Noir, from remarkable sites, meticulously managed by admired colleagues, such as the Eaton Family

Vineyard in Marlborough & the Calvert Vineyard on Felton Road in Bannockburn, the idea of exploring the voice of one of their home varieties from other terroir, greatly appealed.

Furthermore, the opportunity to play with a greater range of varieties and styles was temptation and impetus. Representing both a mechanism to protect against the uprooting of venerable but vulnerable plots, and a philosophical blow against the creeping homogeneity of wine.

Semillon in a textural, full-bodied, white Graves style, Riesling in the vibrant Germanic mode, delicate Pinot Blanc, and from Hawke’s Bay in the 2007 vintage, Cabernet Franc and old-vine Gewurztraminer.

‘The 2005 barrel samples, from their limestone-soil home vineyard in North Canterbury, are among the very best Pinot Noirs that I’ve yet tasted from New Zealand’
Matt Kramer. Wine Spectator. May 2007

For any Pyramid Valley wine in stock please click here.