Michael Brajkovich MW announced as 2024 Institute Masters of Wine, Winemakers’ Winemaker

We have a requirement for Vintage Cellar Hands for the 2020 harvest, commencing early February 2020, and continuing to the end of March or thereabouts. Kumeu River Wines is a small/medium winery processing 400 tonnes. We are premium table wine producers with an international reputation, particularly for Chardonnay. Our vineyards are located in Kumeu and Hawkes Bay, and all of our Vintage winery operations are located at Kumeu. Vintage operations involve shift work of up to 12 hours daily, 5-7 days per week, and include: Grape receival, pressing, crushing. Extensive barrel work: emptying, cleaning, filling. Red wine pumping over, draining...

  Paul traveled to the UK recently to release the 2017 Chardonnays, and this included a major vertical tasting at Farr Vintners. In 2015 Farr put together a tasting of Kumeu River against fine white burgundy the results of which were a resounding success for Kumeu River. This time that tasting focused entirely on Chardonnay from Kumeu River with 48 wines from 2006 – 2017 including the Estate, Coddington, Hunting Hill and Mate’s Vineyard Chardonnays. We have done some vertical tastings before over the years but this one was very comprehensive. Farr Vintners seemed the logical choice to hold such...

Last year Kumeu River acquired a vineyard in Hawkes Bay (photo above) We had already been looking for vineyard land elsewhere because the availability of land for grapes in Kumeu has become extremely limited these days. The opportunity presented to us in the Hawkes Bay is good for the future of Kumeu River Wines. The vineyard in Rays Road, Raukawa was originally a joint venture between Trinity Hill and Pascal Jolivet from Pouilly-Fumé in the Loire Valley of France. We are very excited about the land in this vineyard as it is predominantly based on limestone and is also significantly more elevated...