Our Vineyard & Farm

Waipara River Estate - Our Vision

• to establish a boutique vineyard using sustainable winegrowing practices
• to produce premium quality handcrafted estate grown wines with superb style and elegance.
• to develop a small number of luxury vineyard accommodation units.
• to improve the pasture in sustainable ways for grazing beef cattle

Our Vineyard & the ‘terroir’ in Mackenzies Rd

In 2007, as expatriate kiwis wanting to eventually return home, Michael Peters & Tina Besley purchased the 32ha (85 acres) farm with some of the earliest vines planted in Waipara in the 1980s by John McCaskey who produced Glenmark Wines.  These old deep rooted vines in what we call ‘The Original Vineyard’ block are on their own roots and are phylloxera free, producing  wines with a greater depth and intensity than newer vines.

The vineyard is located on the western side of the valley on post-glacial river terraces formed by the Weka River, a tributary of the Waipara River. Soils are free draining medium to light gravely, silty, loam deposits interspersed with limestone. The relatively low fertility, but good natural pH, reduces vine vigour producing low yields of grapes of high quality and flavour.

Mackenzies Road rises almost imperceptibly towards the west so that the vineyard is 70m higher than Waipara village.  Therefore we seldom get the late spring frosts from which the eastern side suffers. The Waipara Valley is protected from cool easterly winds by Mt Cass and the Teviotdale Hills, but is subject to Canterbury’s warm, hot, dry Nor’westers, so pine and macrocarpa shelter belts provide good protection.

Although designated as a cool climate wine growing area, the area has a typical Mediterranean style climate, characterised by hot summers with many days over 30C and low rainfall during the growing season that ensure vines like Pinot Noir are able to fully ripen. By harvest time in late April–May, the long warm days and cool nights (often an ‘Indian summer’) provide excellent conditions for producing the high quality fruit flavours and natural acidity that are required for producing premium quality wines.

Cool winters with some frosts followed by days with clear blue skies are characteristic of Waipara. When snow is on the surrounding mountains it is spectacularly beautiful.

This distinctive terroir means that Waipara produces superb Rieslings that range from sweeter to crisp dry styles and now elegant Pinot Noirs. Over 20 years this vineyard, as Glenmark Wines, won some 45 medals including several Gold medals and a New Zealand Champion.

Waipara River Estate has upgraded the vineyard to latest sustainable standards, producing Riesling, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon & Gewurtztraminer grapes for our Waipara River Estate label.

The Farm

We are re-developing the farm pastures in order to raise beef cattle.

A programme of sequential crops – peas, oats, kale and then lucerne is planned in order to naturally improve the soil structure and raise the fertility as it provides feed for the cattle.

We have upgraded fences, gates, driveways and planted new shelter belts to protect stock from the Nor-Wester and Southerly.