Editor’s Note: Part one of a two-part Wine Cellar column on New Zealand’s Greystone Vineyards, and how a young winemaker who found her calling on the Camino de Santiago in Spain is taking the helm at one of New Zealand’s most thrilling estates and why the limestone hills above Omihi will speak as clearly through her as they did through her predecessor. Next week’s installment will appear May 21 in This Week on Nantucket.
(May 14, 2026) There are wineries one admires from afar, and there are wineries that strike a chord or inspire a strong feeling and stay with one.
Greystone, on the limestone slopes of New Zealand’s Waipara Valley in North Canterbury, is firmly the latter. The land it sits on is older than memory: an ancient seabed heaved up from the Pacific by the slow violence of plate tectonics, leaving behind a north-facing fold of fossil-studded limestone and clay that locals affectionately call “the golden mile.”
This is a love letter, but also an honest accounting. After more than 40 years of writing about wine, I have learned to be skeptical of the easy myths the industry hands us. Greystone – sold in the United States as Grey’s Peak – has none of that. The truth on the ground is better than any marketing copy.
And the truth on the ground, in 2026, has a new chapter.
A sheep farm with a secret
In 2000, the Thomas family set out to find a piece of New Zealand earth capable of producing cool-climate wines worthy of comparison with the very best in the world.
What they found on the rolling Omihi slopes of the Teviotdale Hills was an old sheep farm atop a hidden treasure: a north-facing ribbon of limestone studded with marine fossils, the bones of an ancient ocean.
Debbie and Peter Thomas saw what others had walked past. By 2004, with viticulturist Nick Gill (lured down from Penfolds), they had planted 13 blocks of vines across that ancient land. The first estate wines followed in 2008. The rest has been uphill, but in the best sense, the way fine vineyards almost always are.
To know the Thomases is to understand the soul of the place. They are warm, unpretentious, tireless and deeply serious about the land they steward.
They could have built a flashy commercial brand. Instead, they built something rarer: a family-sized, certified-organic, regenerative estate with an honest restaurant, a cellar door that feels like a friend’s kitchen and a roster of wines that reads like a love poem to a specific patch of earth.
For nearly two decades, the cellar at Greystone was in the hands of Dom Maxwell — the late-blooming commerce graduate turned vineyard hand, turned Gourmet Traveler New Zealand Winemaker of the Year, whose audacious Vineyard Ferment Pinot Noir put a small Waipara estate on the world’s most serious wine maps.
Maxwell has now retired, and one tips one’s hat. He leaves behind a body of work – eight clones across 13 blocks, a Decanter International Trophy, a research collaboration with Lincoln University on indigenous yeast populations and a generation of young winemakers shaped by his bench that few in the New World can match.
But Greystone has never been a one-person operation, and the family knew exactly who should follow. In 2024, Georgia Mehlhopt – already North Canterbury Young Winemaker of the Year in 2022 and 2024 – was named the national Tonnellerie de Mercurey Young Winemaker of the Year. She is the first North Cantabrian ever to win the national title.
She is also, I would argue, the most interesting young winemaker in New Zealand right now.
A winemaker’s origin story
Most winemakers will tell you they fell in love with wine at a family table, or in a university classroom, or behind a restaurant pass. Mehlhopt fell in love with wine walking 800 kilometers across Spain.
Q: The Camino is where this started for you. Talk me through that moment: Was there one specific conversation in a Spanish vineyard that flipped the switch, or was it more cumulative than that?
A: It was lots of small moments that built up to the final decision to take the plunge of a career change. I was interested in viticulture before beginning my law studies but saw farming as more of a risk than law.
By the time I arrived in Spain after years of working in law and feeling quite burnt out, I found myself drawn to the vineyards I passed along the Camino. The people working in them genuinely seemed happy, finding immense joy in the repetitive task of shoot thinning.
In the hot days along the trail, shade was sought under the vines, a very humbling experience to be so at the mercy of nature while also making it your savior. In the evenings, surrounded by other hikers, we would share bottles of Rioja over interesting conversations.
The wine was the centerpiece of the table and brought everyone together to have human moments of connection. It became impossible for me to ignore how deeply wine connected people, place and experience. Eventually I realized the risk of pursuing it might actually be worth taking.
Q: You walked 800 kilometers before you knew you wanted to make wine. Has that pace – long, deliberate, on foot, talking to people – stayed with you in how you approach a vintage?
A: Absolutely, but it’s also intrinsically who I am as a person. I like to make deliberate and educated decisions that ultimately help me to bring out the best in a vintage. During the winemaking season, I’m on the cellar floor helping to physically make the wines, continually sampling and gathering opinions from my cellar team.
It’s a very intentional process that can feel overwhelming too when there’s lots going on. The best way to tackle that really is one foot after the other.
Mehlhopt came back to New Zealand, took a position at Amisfield in Central Otago – Pinot country, but very different Pinot country from what would come next – and in early 2022 moved north to Waipara as Greystone’s assistant winemaker.
Q: From Amisfield in Central Otago to Greystone in Waipara is a real geological and stylistic shift. What did Central Otago teach you that you brought north, and what did you have to unlearn?
A: Central Otago is very focused on Pinot Noir, and rightly so. I learned very quickly how to work with the variety and its different wants and needs. The region also has a great sense of community too, and it was apparent to me how important it is to support other people in the industry. A rising tide lifts all ships.
When I came to Greystone the warmer climate and different soils meant that the wines were wanting to be something else, particularly Pinot Noir. The aromas and palate changed from intense fruit and structure of central, to the soft but deeply savory and umami character that Waipara is so well known for. I also got to work with other varieties that central can lack due to the cold: Chardonnay, Syrah, Pinotage, etc.
Q: When you first walked the Omihi blocks, what did the land actually tell you beyond the marketing language?
A: Greystone is covered in limestone, and it’s hard to miss. The rock juts out from the hillside and makes its presence known. Immediately this indicated the potential for the fruit to have great acid retention and texture.
However, when you’re on the Greystone property surrounded by the rolling Omihi hills and the fresh air of Waipara the one word that always springs to mind is “vibrancy.” It’s a very peaceful place that is full of so much life: birds, sheep, flowers, the chickens and pigs, and people. I believe the vibrancy of the land is reflected in our wines too and hope that consumers feel that when they sample our wines.
By the end of that first year she had won the regional Young Winemaker of the Year title — the first time anyone from North Canterbury had even made it to the national finals. Two years later, she won it nationally. The trajectory has the quality of inevitability about it.
Beneath Greystone’s vines lies a band of north-facing slopes along the western edge of the Waipara Valley, sheltered from the easterly winds by the Teviotdale Hills and cooled by maritime breezes off Pegasus Bay. The soils are a patchwork of light clays, clay over limestone and pure greystone — a cemented mass of fossils, seashells and small pebbles fused by the seismic activity of North Canterbury.
Limestone is the great unifier of the world’s most age-worthy whites and most haunting Pinots. Burgundy has it. Champagne has it. The Loire has it. New Zealand has it almost nowhere: except here.
That single geological accident is the whole point of Greystone. Master sommelier Cameron Douglas once wrote that he recognized the limestone signature in the bouquet of every Greystone wine he tasted, and I find I cannot disagree.
Q: Limestone is the geological unicorn of New Zealand. When you’re tasting through a barrel, what does that limestone signature actually feel like to you on the palate? And how do you protect it through winemaking?
A: Limestone is quintessentially Greystone. In the vineyard it naturally limits vigor and crop size, which gives us concentration, texture and excellent acid retention in the fruit. In the finished wines, that translates into freshness, length, vibrancy and a certain energy across the palate.
My job in the cellar is really to protect that character rather than mask it. We try to tailor what we do to each wine depending on how it is behaving and are very thoughtful with our oak selection so the vineyard remains the focus of the wine.
The estate is fully certified organic by BioGro New Zealand and has been working toward fully regenerative, carbon-neutral farming since 2021. Sheep still return each winter to mow between the rows. Some traditions earn their keep.
Peter McEachern is the general manager of the Nantucket Yacht Club. He has been buying wine, creating wine lists and running wine tastings since 1983. He can be reached at peter@nantucketyachtclub.org
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