Larry McKenna is giving us a tiki-tour around Martinborough in his 4WD truck. We have a hair raising drive up what seems like a goats track to one of the highest points in the area - on private farmland - to be given a most fabulous vista of the expanding Martinborough wine growing region. There's the original cluster of vineyards on the Martinborough terrace near the township and to the east are the new developments on the terraces at Te Muna Road. This is where McKenna has planted his own vineyard atop a natural escarpment carved out by the Huangara River below. The geographical feature lends it name to the vineyard. It is called 'The Escarpment Vineyard'.

"What do you think of the pinot made from young vines", he asks. The pinot noir specialist wants not to hear my opinion, but the opinion of the American wine writer I am travelling with.

I don't think he is too concerned with the answer however. He can't be. He is in the process of planting pinot noir vines at The Escarpment Vineyard as we speak so until his vines 'grow up', his wines will have to be made from young vines.

But Larry McKenna has one advantage on other new winegrowers to the region. He knows it well! After all he has lived it and breathed it since arriving in 1986 as the new winemaker for the fledging Martinborough Vineyards Limited, one of the area's founding producers. The vines were young back then in '86. And so was Larry. Together they grew, both vines and winemaker, learning the site, learning the soils, learning the climate, learning how the various clones reacted to the 'terroir' and learning varying winemaking styles to find what suited that region best.

Quite simply, he's had the pinot practice. Firstly the thirteen years practiced at Martinborough Vineyards from that inaugural vintage in 1986 to his final flourish after the wines from the 1999 vintage were in barrel, and producing perhaps the finest pinot noir ever made in New Zealand, the Martinborough Reserve Pinot Noir 1998.

Then while developing The Escarpment Vineyard, Larry's been consulting to pinot noir producers around the country and in Tasmania and on the Mornington Peninsula as well, giving him practice in regions other than Martinborough.

So who is Larry McKenna? I ask and I find that, heaven forbid, it is an Aussie who is heralded as one of the finest pinot noir winemakers in New Zealand!

Larry is an Adelaide boy so it is not really a surprise to find that his initial interest in wine came from the local product - after all in South Australia wine was more prevalent than in other places. His Father had a wine cellar and wine was the beverage at family occasions, the favourite tipples being McLaren Vale Cabernet or Cabernet/Shiraz blends. But it took an Orlando Frontignac at one of those dinners to convince Larry that white wines were worth drinking as well.

Larry went to Scotch College in Adelaide and one of his schoolmates is now another well-known winemaker in New Zealand, John Hancock. John was a boarder at Scotch while Larry was a dayboy. John recalls those Sunday dinners at the McKenna's and the awesome reds that Larry's father opened.

When John left high school he went to Roseworthy College to study Oenology while Larry did other stuff, including working as a 'jackaroo' in the north of South Australia and on the Darwin to Adelaide gas pipeline. He also gained a lab technician's qualification at Flinders University. Then Larry too found his way to Roseworthy where he concentrated on viticulture as the horticulture component of his Diploma in Agriculture. All the while the friends kept up their vinous studies of the palate.

John came to New Zealand first to work at Delegat's Wine Estate in Auckland as the winemaker. Needing an assistant he offered his friend, Larry, the job. Larry's girlfriend Sue (now his wife) was a Kiwi, so the decision to come to New Zealand was not hard. John left Delegat's in 1982 and Larry took over as winemaker. There he stayed until 1985.

The opportunity in Martinborough was as much about a final and long-term financial commitment to the industry, as anything else, says Larry. He was offered a shareholding in Martinborough Vineyards and knew he and Sue were "in or out". He had tried a number of the early reds from the district and they "just blew him away" compared to what he had been working with in Auckland. His South Australian upbringing quickly made him realise that the Wairarapa was a lot more like grape growing country than Auckland.

And the rest, as they say, is history - or it is up to 1999.

When Larry and Sue made the decision to leave Martinborough Vineyards and set up a new venture the book was open as to where. They looked at New Zealand and decided the balance of cool climate with enough warmth to ripen pinot noir successfully every year with the best soil types was in Martinborough. They became to recognise that the brand McKenna, Martinborough and Pinot Noir was a real thing and should be used as leverage as much as possible. So Martinborough and Pinot noir were givens. But most of the original Terraces were already developed in vineyard.

They 'discovered' the Te Muna river terraces on the other side of the hill. This was the only place in the area that offered all the right attributes and land in sufficient quantity. It may just the perfect place too. For "Te Muna" translated from Maori means "secret" or "special place".

"This valley is the future of Martinborough", says Larry. There are other vineyards being established here too, the biggest of which is Craggy Range whose planting's alone will double the current output of Martinborough.

In The Escarpment Vineyard, which sits atop metres of gravelly stones, some of the pinot noir vines have been planted very close together. I've never seen such intimate vine-spacing before. Planted at 6,600 vines per hectare, these will be low yielding - the aim is one kilogram of fruit per vine. "It's all about shoot management, not canopy management", says Larry as we walk through the vineyard adding they will achieve one bunch per shoot and one bottle per vine. There are three hectares of these close-planted vines, which are on their own roots. Martinborough is currently a phylloxera-free zone - let's hope it stays that way.

Elsewhere the vines are at a wider spacing with 3,300 vines per hectares. There are 11 hectares of grafted pinot noir vines which will be cropped to a yield of 2 kg per vine, plus 2 hectares of Chardonnay, 2 hectares of Pinot Gris, 1 hectare of Riesling and 1 hectare of experimental Pinot blanc.

Pinot Noir has long been Larry McKenna's passion and his contribution to the New Zealand pinot noir industry as a whole must be recognised. He was the catalyst for the Southern Pinot Noir Workshop, a self-help workshop for New Zealand pinot noir winemakers where wines are openly critiqued. The workshop, which has been running for many years now, was unashamedly borrowed from the Oregon winemakers. The Oregon International Pinot Noir Celebration led to New Zealand's first Pinot Noir Conference with Larry McKenna the catalyst for that great event too.

Larry has his views on new world pinot noir. He feels that the wines being produced from this part of the world are fitting too much into a mould and missing some of the essential ingredients of complexity and longevity that come about from structure, tannin and balance. Vine age and winemaker experience will certainly help but he believes a lot can be done in the winery and vineyard to work towards this goal.

"Watch this space and see how well we do", he says.

I'll certainly be watching and look forward to the first releases, perhaps at the end of next year.

© Sue Courtney
August 2002