The garage master

Ollie Powrie has long hair and long limbs and occasionally rides a long board. For a long time, he’s also been making wine in his garage, writes UNO wine columnist Jess Easton, and they’re so good you’ll find yourself, well, longing for them.

photos Richard Brimer

Ollie Powrie’s party trick is that he makes wine in his garage. His passion, business venture and long-term lifestyle choice, meanwhile, is that he makes really, really good wine in his garage.

There’s a romantic adventurer in Ollie’s viticultural stylings. Together with wife Rebecca, and plenty of help from his two daughters, Ollie has been making wine in his garage since handpicking an abandoned row of Chardonnay more than 20 years ago.

That was a hobby for two decades, while studying viticulture and winemaking in Hawke's Bay, then eventually becoming chief viticulturist for Villa Maria Estate. It morphed into a business when Ollie and his family set up Chateau Garage in 2020, then a full-time gig when he left Villa Maria two years later.

He and his family spent seven months in Italy soon after, exploring a number of intriguing varieties and honing his craft even further, and those Old World experiences have added depth and character to the wines he conjures out of the back-blocks of Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne.

Barrels of Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Rosé and Syrah fill his old brick garage, resplendent with turrets, in Napier, where sampling delicious vintages becomes so much more personal and intimate. Fittingly though, for a free-spirited surfer brave enough to make great wine in his garage, Ollie is also open-minded about exploring varietals.

He’s the reason I'm now a complete Albariño convert; appropriately enough, Ollie was our first anointed ’Saint’ at Saint Wine Bar in Tauranga, where he showcased his latest venture, Albariño Brothers, a collaboration with fellow industry gurus Shaye Bird and Ant Saunders.

If you haven’t tried Albariño, you’re in for a treat. Exceptionally food-friendly, this understated Spanish/Portuguese white wine is like Kiwi summer in a glass. With all the brightness, light, zest and freshness of your favourite Chardonnay, it also has enough stone-fruit characteristics to appeal to Sav-drinkers, without throwing the whole floral fruit bowl at you.

Just like Albariño, you may be tempted to underestimate Ollie.  Serious wine people could dismiss the whole garage-winemaker concept as a novelty ploy.  Fair enough, until you learn he spent much of his Villa Maria career alongside Sir George Fistonich, the closest thing to Kiwi winemaking royalty that we have. It was Sir George, in fact, who first planted Albariño vines in the Hawke’s Bay.

And you’ll only underestimate Ollie until you try his wine. If making wine in his garage is a neat party trick, it’s one you’ll want to see repeated, again and again. 

Jess Easton is a director and owner of Kitchen Takeover and Saint Wine Bar, complementing her career as a Tauranga-based lawyer. 

Pure and simple

Sometimes a wine can taste great in the moment, with a stunning setting and cool tunes playing. But what happens when you strip all that back? UNO wine columnist
Jess Easton finds out.

PHOTO  Jamie Troughton/
Dscribe Media

It’s the ultimate test of a wine maker’s prowess – to see if your best vintage still sings while being sipped from a coffee mug, sitting on the floor. 

Thanks to Matt Connell’s easy-going Otago charm and remarkable ability to produce wines that transcend the vessels they’re served in, he passed that particular test with flying colours. 

That day remains one of my most memorable wine tastings, short on ceremony but long on delight. Matt’s distributor, Provenance NZ’s Rachel Baillie, called me one Tuesday afternoon to say they were in town, had a spare half an hour, and could they drop in? 

The only problem was that I was in the middle of moving; in fact, the last boxes were lined up outside the door. 

Did I mention it was also my birthday? There was a lot going on. I was possibly in trackies and in the middle of a final deep clean. 

Rachel and Matt breezed in, we scrambled some coffee mugs from a box, raised a toast to spontaneity and then I truly celebrated my birthday in style. 

Matt’s Rendition Pinot Noir is a hand-crafted, site-specific, boutique wine at its finest. He’s cleverly brought the fruit forward and then hidden it behind a silky subtle structure. It is incredibly well balanced, whether sipped from finest crystal or cheap porcelain. 

And his Chardonnay is Chablis-style, crisp and interesting. He showcases the very soul of Central Otago, built on quartz reefs, gold nuggets, crisp winters and balmy summers. 

Matt and his wife Beth have been involved in the wine industry for nearly a quarter of a century, combining hospitality experience, horticulture management and a passion for viticulture.

Each vintage they produce is unique – a tribute to the site it’s harvested from. On Matt’s most recent visit to Tauranga, we swapped moving house-vibes for a late-afternoon salt-infused beach, and he introduced us to his Area 45 Dry Muscat. 

It’s a rare variety and needs to be treated carefully, so the heavy floral bouquets and whiff of lollies don’t overwhelm – instead, Matt’s trademark structure and dry finish takes you by delightful surprise. 

Nothing is more surprising, mind you, than sampling something truly delicious in unexpected circumstances. I can definitely recommend it. 

Jess Easton is a director and owner of Kitchen Takeover and St Amand, complementing her career as a Tauranga-based lawyer.

Fancy footwork

Marlborough’s magnificent whites have so much more to offer than perfumed savs, as UNO wine columnist Jess Easton discovers.

Photos Jamie Troughton/Dscribe Media

There are many ways to become a master winemaker and while Richelle Tyney may have taken a slightly unorthodox route, the result is still going to end up the same.

The Nelson-raised, Blenheim-based wahine – who has strong Bay of Plenty whakapapa (Ngāti Maniapoto/Ngāti Porou) – manages the winemaking programme at Greywacke, working alongside enigmatic founder Kevin Judd.

That’s the same Kevin Judd who helped put Cloudy Bay, Marlborough and New Zealand on the world wine map, forever changing the perception of 'new world' wines and Sauvignon Blanc as a variety.

He started his own label Greywacke in 2009, named for the relatively bland bedrock that underpins most of Aotearoa, and started producing vintages that are anything but bland.

Before joining Greywacke in 2021, meanwhile, Richelle had spent the best part of a decade working with the likes of Mahi’s Brian Bicknell and Spy Valley’s Paul Bourgeois.

Before that, however, she’d studied exercise science in Christchurch, played representative touch rugby and been a handy basketballer.  Two uncles – Jamie Joseph and Terry Mitchell – were All Blacks and she knew far more about sport than wine, apart from that it came in at least three different colours and was good fun at parties.

Her OE changed all that. Landing a nannying job in Switzerland, she was introduced to fine wine by the family she was working for and a lightbulb went off in her head. Before she knew it, she was back home, enrolled in winemaking at Lincoln University.

A very similar lightbulb went off in my head the first time I tried a Greywacke Riesling, building up to Kitchen Takeover’s Ki Tua event earlier this year. 

Smooth and delicious, with layers of honeysuckle, citrus peel and juicy
stone-fruit flavours, subtly emerging and swirling rather than bursting and punching.  And, wait a minute – it’s from Marlborough? A region that is known for being Sauvignon Blanc centric with not much else.

A morning tasting with Richelle dispelled that misconception forever, as she unleashed the full spectrum of Greywacke’s white wine wizardry. Riesling, Pinot Gris, a startlingly good Chardonnay and a Wild Sauvignon that was wildly interesting and jaw-droppingly tasty.

Greywacke is all about hand-picking and hand-crafting. And the thing I love about Richelle is how she’s completely unfazed at working with an industry legend; her own confidence and sense of self are only going to grow the depth and quality of Greywacke’s offerings.

“Kevin’s both highly creative and very detailed at the same time – which is what makes him so talented – and there's a mutual respect where questions are asked and decisions are made,” she explains. “It’s rewarding to work with an industry icon and know that my input is genuinely contributing to the wine style."

And maybe there’s something in her sporty background that helps too; a sure-footedness when the pressure comes on and the weather throws curve balls.

“I love it at harvest, with all the problem-solving and thinking on your feet. That’s the beauty of it – no year is ever going to be the same.  I wouldn’t recommend it but I love it.” 

Jess Easton is a director and owner of Kitchen Takeover, complementing her career as a Tauranga-based lawyer.

Pouring their hearts out

UNO’s wine columnist Jess Easton heads to Hawke’s Bay to discover a resilient label which is perfectly balanced in more ways than one.

Words Jess Easton  |   Photos Jamie Troughton/Dscribe Media

Woven into grapes on the Saorsa wine label is a heart so vivid and intricate, it almost pulses.

Everything they do, they do with heart. And while their recent viticultural journeys have involved a degree of heartbreak, they've also been pretty heart-warming too.

When we drop in to see them at their Haumoana home, a steady drizzle occasionally erupts into rain outside. A traumatic Cyclone Gabrielle-plagued summer has given way to a miserable winter and Alex has been busy digging boxes and boxes of their delicious wine out of the silt.

Saorsa is Gaelic, with rough translations of freedom, salvation, redemption and liberty. The label lived up to its name; despite the vineyard being in the heart of the Esk Valley, it came through the cyclone relatively unscathed. Unfortunately they had stored most of their stock at neighbouring Linden Estate and much of it was left buried beneath metres of flood-strewn material, however.

But this is where the heart comes in. As soon as he could after the unprecedented devastation, Alex was back helping clear the vineyards, pulling the drowned stock of neighbours out from beneath the wires, doing his bit to help resurrect an ailing industry.

Wife Hana, meanwhile, was ignoring the floodwaters lapping at their own home and spending days and nights on duty with the local volunteer fire department.

With Haumoana's fire station under water, their home became the
designated base, and remained that way for months afterwards.

Selfless and community driven, it's worth remembering the couple have
three children of their own, while Hana – a qualified stainless steel
engineer – has a full-time job as operations manager in the waste industry.

The pair are perfect foils for each other; Hana is a 100km/h live-wire, bristling with energy and zest, while Alex is all earthy calm. And somehow, impossibly, they've infused all this personality into their wines.

The Saorsa Syrah 2021 is luxuriously earthy and smoky, with hints of rose, yet retaining a freshness and liveliness.

And their Viognier 2021 is decadent and silky, with bold notes of peach and apricot mingling with toasted spices.

Saorsa's grapes are handpicked and treated with the utmost care. There are no shortcuts during winemaking and the whole process is an affectionate nod to tradition, mixed with modern sensibilities and style.

This is the dream Alex and Hana have created – making wine they love with the ones they love – all of which is infused with heart. 

Wines worth hunting for

UNO’s new wine columnist Jess Easton is introduced to the wild Wairarapa through a unique fine wine.

Photos Jamie Troughton/Dscribe Media

JESS EASTON

Jannine Rickards arrived for our Martinborough meeting adorned with luscious wines and an apology. She'd wanted to catch up earlier but needed to break down a boar she'd shot, she explained. And the day before that was a write-off, landing a hefty kingfish while out fishing.

Any further attempts to say sorry by the Wairarapa winemaker – who sells under the crazily appropriate Huntress label – were met by our group with thoroughly deaf ears and a barrage of questions, which she quickly silenced by opening a bottle of her Waihonga.

Fermented with wild yeasts, each of her vintages is a unique expression of the wild Wairarapa. Jannine (Ngā Puhi/Ngai Te Rangi) has an uncanny knack of conveying her love of nature and passion for hunting and foraging through her wine. Her own wairua (spirit) shines through, with an earthiness and intense connection between whenua (land) and palate.

Waihonga is Māori for “nectar” and the honey-coloured amber wine comes from pinot gris grapes fermented on skins with a dollop of skin-fermented riesling. It's fresh and vibrant with a deliciously long finish, dragging tones of peach, honey and spice along for the ride.

And what a ride it turned out to be. Tasked with finding wine matches for Kitchen Takeover's “Ki Tua” event earlier this year, combining delicious liquid offerings with the culinary mastery of Kārena and Kasey Bird, meeting Jannine seemed like a sign from the gods. One sip and I knew immediately this wine was going on our menu.

Fast forward a few months and Jannine's Waihonga sat serenely alongside Kārena and Kasey's Kai Kōhua dish, a deconstructed boil-up featuring bacon broth, nasturtium and watercress.

Ki Tua presented diners with five delectable courses, each inspired by legends of female Māori atua (gods), each paired with wines from Māori-owned vineyards or winemakers.

It was entirely fitting we opened things up with Tohu's Rewa Rose Méthode Traditionelle 2017. Tohu is acknowledged as He mātāmua taketake – the original and first Māori-owned and operated wine label. The stunning Greywacke Riesling 2021 was next up, made by winemaker Richelle Tyney (Ngati Tama ki te tau Ihu/Te Atiawa/ Ngāti Maniapoto/Ngāti Porou).

The Tiki WJM Waipara Pinot Noir 2017 followed The Huntress as the fourth match, produced by Sue (Ngāi Tahu) and Royce (Ngāti Ranginui) McKean. The second Tohu offering – the Raiha Reserve Noble Riesling 2016 – provided silky apricot and honey flavours with a dash of zesty lemon meringue and sweet citrus to finish.

Showcasing Māori wine talent was such a proud moment for our team.
And while New Zealand is renowned for our Marlborough sauv blancs and Central Otago pinots, plenty of sensational boutique offerings are
out there. Using Jannine Rickards as inspiration, sometimes you've just got to go hunting for them. 

Jess Easton is a director and owner of Kitchen Takeover, complementing her career as a Tauranga-based lawyer. Her lifelong love of wines has been taken to the next level, tasked with crafting the wine list and wine matches for Kitchen Takeover's culinary masterpieces.