Mission Estate Winery – Since 1851

Oldest Winery Still a Pioneer

Hawke's Bay Today ~ 26 August 2006

New Zealand's oldest winery, The Mission Estate, has come a long way since chief executive Peter Holley evaluated the sell-up in 1996, and has as exciting range of wines to be released later in the year.

Once a home for Marist priests and brothers, the Mission Estate is steeped in history.

Established in 1851, the Mission has been the first to do a lot of things in terms of wine production in New Zealand.

After the seminary relocated to Auckland in 1992, one of the assets left was the winery.

Mission chief executive Peter Holley explained he was instructed to evaluate the sale of the main building when he arrived in the country from his native South Africa in 1996, but decided to take the opportunity to cornerstone the wine and build on the existing cellar door and restaurant enterprises.

The tired building was given a full face lift in 2001, which opened up more opportunities for hosting weddings and corporate events, with a range of function rooms complementing the existing chapel.

The two accommodation buildings were pulled down, while the cellar door was relocated up the hill to showcase Mission's selection of wines.

Mission Estate prides itself on its energy efficiency, which Mr Holley says is one of the best in New Zealand. The winery runs an environmental management programme and has ISO 14001 environmental management standard accreditation.

"Over the past 10 years we have put a lot of science and technology into the winery.

"Before the recent winery upgrade we had no space or room for expansion. So the upgrade of the winery, including the 1932 cellar, took us up to 2000 tonnes" Mr Holley said.

The Mission wine cellar is a thermomass construction, with the concrete panels containing a sandwich of extruded polystyrene. The roof is also insulated, which allows the temperature to be controlled in an environmentally sustainable way.

And refrigeration units run on different systems for controlling fermentation temperatures and cold-stabilising the wines. Specific compressors are used for different functions, which make for considerable energy savings.

"We now make some of New Zealand's finest wines in the most environmentally friendly and energy-sufficient manner," Mr Holley said.

"It's all about the application of modern technology and traditional winemaking, to produce outstanding products that exceed consumer expectation.

"We are moving over to using screwcaps, which is quite a big thing for us as Mission has been associated with corks for a lot longer than many other wineries," he said.

Mr Holley explained that in the 1980s, Mission was making a lot of blended non-vintage wines. But then moved to producing vintage, varietal styles as consumers were getting more sophisticated, and educated to wine culture.

"We've got some really smart wines and our market is primarily New Zealand-based, with 15 percent of our sales coming from Hawke's Bay which is a nice market for us.

"We have spent a lot of time and effort establishing our domestic market, but we are looking at developing our off-shore business over the next decade.

"at the moment, we primarily focus on the UK and we have limited exports to Singapore and Japan. We've been distribution wine to Japan for about 10 years, but it's only two or three percent of our production," Mr Holley said.

Mission estate owns three vineyard sites within Hawke's Bay - at Church Road, Mere Road and Gimblett Road - and each has slightly different climatic characteristics suited to different grape varieties and wine styles.

Things are looking great for this year's selection of wines, which are due to be released later in the year.

"We have been really fortunate in a number of ways with this year's harvest. While we had rain at times, it didn't hang around for a long time and enabled the fruit to be ripened and successfully harvested.

"Some of the reds we've produced this year are the best we've ever done. We're bottling our Reserve Syrah at the moment which tastes fantastic. We did a tasting about six weeks ago and I'm delighted with the outcome.

"We're very quality focused and it's about putting wines in front of people that they really enjoy," Mr Holley said.

Winemaker Paul Mooney has been at Mission estate for 27 years and has a wealth of experience. He is assisted by Rachel Croft and Stephanie Marquier. Stephanie hails from France and decided to stay with Mission after working the vintage last year, and brings a strong French influence to Mission's wines. The influence harks back to the days when the early Marists arrived in New Zealand from France and planted grapes. The Brothers who tended the vineyards and made the wine were trained in France.

"Mission has got a lot of distinctive assets. And of course we have the Mission Concert, which is run as a subsidiary business. For the 2007 concert, we have decided to cut the volumes of concert label wine to 50 cases, which will be offered to prestige table customers first, then platinum and the general admission area," Mr Holley added.

So while their wines go from strength to strength, Peter Holley is on another mission - to keep pushing innovative ideas to propel the historic winery further into the 21st Century.