Editor’s Note: Part two of a two-part Wine Cellar column on New Zealand’s Greystone Vineyards, and how Georgia Mehlhopt, 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.
Pinot Noir is the headline act at Greystone, accounting for more than 60 percent of plantings. The flagship Thomas Brothers Pinot Noir is sourced from the highest-elevation block: wind-buffeted, frost-protected and naturally devigorated, producing Greystone’s most structured and age-worthy wine.
The Brothers’ Reserve 2012 won the Decanter World Wine Awards International Trophy in 2014 for Best Pinot Noir over 15 pounds, beating contenders from both hemispheres, including Burgundy itself.
Beside the Pinot, the estate grows Chardonnay (the Erin’s Reserve is a serious wine: citrus, hazelnut and the cool tension of well-handled lees); Riesling (the Basket Star dessert Riesling is an utter delight); Pinot Gris (the single-block bottling has real generosity and texture and is Greystone’s top-selling wine); barrel-fermented Sauvignon Blanc that lives miles from the green Marlborough idiom; Gewürztraminer; and even a small block of Syrah clinging to a steep limestone slope.
The naming convention – Basket Star, Brothers – is a quiet salute to the marine fossils underfoot and to the family who put their name on the gate.
There is also a Pétillant Naturel in the lineup now, Greystone’s elegant ancient-method sparkler, bottled before its first fermentation completes.
Mehlhopt was happy to elaborate on this and more.
Q: You’ve named the Vineyard Ferment Pinot Noir and the Pet Nat as the two wines that hold your heart. Why those two, specifically? They’re very different wines from the same place.
A: The Vineyard Ferment Pinot Noir is the most incredible wine to make and really brings me in tune with nature each year. We pick the grapes and process them out in the vineyard so the fruit never comes into the winery. It takes a great deal of “trust the process” to be able to do this, leaving the fermenter at the mercy of nature and it’s temperature fluctuations.
I’m constantly having to check the weather to make sure we have the right cover on the fermenter (soft if it’s sunny to avoid bugs, hard if it’s wet to avoid the rain going inside the fermenting wine). Each day I go into the vineyard and check on the fermenters, which is the most peaceful part of my day, getting out of the hustle and bustle of a busy vintage. The result of this wine is one that truly speaks to the place and time it was made, and it’s hard not to love that.
The Pet-Nat is the first Greystone wine I ever tried and it was so bright and energetic that it really stood out to me. It’s a wine that’s made from an incredible pocket of Riesling on the clay soils and some amazing fruit goes into it. It’s such a fun bottle to share with friends and family and is a reminder not to take life too seriously. There’s always an occasion to open one.
Continuity and evolution:
The wine that put Greystone on the global wine writers’ map is the Vineyard Ferment Pinot Noir. Beginning in 2012, Dom Maxwell and the team began doing what almost no other winemaker in the world does: rather than carting grapes to the winery, they took inert fermenters into the vineyard and let the fruit ferment in situ, on the very dirt that grew it, with only the wild yeasts native to that spot.
The weather dictated the temperature. The vintage dictated the rhythm. The wines were paler than the estate Pinot, more ethereal and more savory, almost translucent in their detail, and unmistakably Greystone.
It was, in the team’s own words, “bloody hard work.” It was also one of the most honest expressions of place anywhere in cool-climate Pinot. The question for any new winemaker stepping into this cellar is whether to continue, refine or push it somewhere new.
Q: A vineyard ferment program is, by Maxwell’s own admission, “bloody hard work.” Are you continuing it, refining it or pushing it somewhere new?
A: I will absolutely continue it and feel very privileged to have it in my portfolio. While I agree that it is tough work to make, it’s very rewarding once you have the final product in your glass. I’m happy with the wine at the moment but I am always looking to find ways to improve things. We love the Pinot Noir so much though that I am trialing a vineyard-fermented Chardonnay this year to see how the vineyard can influence a different variety.
Q: Dom talked about “stripping out everything we could” to reveal the vineyard. Is subtraction your instinct too, or does your hand show up somewhere his didn’t?
A: I was mentored by Dom and believe that we have a similar philosophy and approach to winemaking in that we like to showcase the fruit rather than our winemaking. At the same time, every winemaker inevitably brings part of themselves into the cellar. I’m sure over time my own perspective will begin to show gently in the wines, hopefully in a way that still feels true to Greystone.
Q: Every winemaker inherits a house style and eventually has to decide which parts are the house and which parts were the previous tenant. What do you think is genuinely Greystone, regardless of who’s holding the refractometer?
A: The Greystone vineyard gives us wines with energy, concentration, texture and a very distinct sense of place. While each variety expresses that differently, the combination of clay and limestone creates a character that feels uniquely Greystone. For me, the goal is to continue making wines that could come from nowhere else, wines where the vineyard is immediately recognizable in the glass.
For two decades, Greystone has produced more than wine. It has produced winemakers. {}Mehlhopt i{/span}s the third nationally-credentialed cellar talent the place has nurtured.
Q: Greystone has built a team where assistant winemakers go on to win national titles. What’s actually different about the culture there? What do Debbie and Peter Thomas do that other owners don’t?
A: I believe their influence is giving us the support to pursue our own interests. People do well when they have freedom to chase what excites and grips them the most, and Peter and Debbie are very encouraging for this. The winery and wider business is full of people who like turning up each morning because they are passionate and want to be there. This creates a working environment that drives us all to be the best version of ourselves and to seek out opportunities of growth. Peter has been very encouraging for me to try new things and to be curious, which is how the vineyard-fermented Chardonnay started this year.
Q: You’re now leading a cellar that includes people who taught you. How are you thinking about that?
A: It’s an immense privilege to lead a winery alongside people who have taught and shaped me so much over the last few years. It’s been very important to me to create an environment where everyone feels respected, heard and invested in what we’re making together. I’m very lucky to work with a team that is incredibly skilled and passionate, and I still learn from them every day. I rely on my team to be honest and communicative in the way we operate together and work with the wines. My role is to help give direction, keep us moving forward and make thoughtful decisions while staying open to the knowledge and ideas around me. At Greystone, there’s a strong culture of curiosity and collaboration already, and I want to continue building on that rather than changing it.
It is, in the end, a family business in the truest sense, and Debbie and Peter Thomas are the quiet center of gravity around which the whole enterprise turns.
Awards: A partial accounting
It would be easier to list the competitions Greystone has not won than those it has. The shorthand: a Decanter International Trophy for Best Pinot Noir (2014); multiple Decanter golds for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay across vintages; Air New Zealand Wine Awards Champion Pinot Noir trophies; a 2019 Gold at the New Zealand Organic Wine Awards; a Sydney International Wine Competition Blue-Gold and a Top 100 finish; consistent placement among The Real Review’s Top Wineries of New Zealand; Raymond Chan’s Winery of the Year (2018); Dom Maxwell as Gourmet Traveler New Zealand Winemaker of the Year (2018); Georgia Mehlhopt as 2024 Tonnellerie de Mercurey New Zealand Young Winemaker of the Year; and editorial features in Decanter, Wine Spectator and The Guardian on vineyard innovation.
The trophy cabinet is crowded. The next decade will fill it further.
I will close with this. In the autumn of 2024, our daughter Isabelle – now pursuing her Wine and Spirit Education Trust diploma in London and working as a sommelier – spent three months on the floor of the Greystone harvest, working through the vintage from sorting tables to fermentation pumps to early-morning vineyard picks.
She came home with calluses, a deeper understanding of cool-climate Pinot than most graduate programs deliver and stories about Debbie, Peter and the team that I will treasure for the rest of my life.
Isabelle worked harder there than she has ever worked anywhere, and she came back transformed.
That is the test of a great winery: not the medals, but what it does to the young people lucky enough to walk into it. Greystone passes that test the way limestone passes water: completely, gracefully and to the lasting benefit of everything downstream.
Q: If you had to put one wine from your time at Greystone into a time capsule for a stranger to open in 2050, which bottle and which vintage, and what would the note inside say?
A: I’d put the 2021 Erin’s Chardonnay in the capsule. It was an incredible year and to me, captures a true reflection of Greystone and the soils. Who knows what the world will be like in 2050 and how the vines and microclimates evolve. There will be changes, even as the vines age, and the wines will change with that too.
Q: Last one. What’s the question wine writers always ask you that misses the point, and what should we be asking instead?
A: People often focus heavily on what happens in the cellar and the technical side of winemaking. While that absolutely matters, I think the biggest influence on wine quality comes from the vineyard: from the people growing the fruit, the soils and the microclimate of a season. As winemakers we’re ultimately working with what the vineyard gives us, so I’d love to see more attention paid to the farming and the land alongside the cellar decisions.
Pour a glass of Greystone. The land – that ancient sea, those fossil-studded slopes, the patient hands of the Thomas family and the new, sure hands of Georgia Mehlhopt – is in there.
It always was. It always will be.
Greystone Wines, 8 Vineyard Lane, Waipara 7483, North Canterbury, New Zealand. The cellar door and restaurant are open Thursday through Monday; the Trust the Chef four-course lunch remains, in my view, the single best wine-country meal on the South Island.
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
Dining and Cooking