Wednesday, 22 October 2014 08:29

Allergies no hindrance

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Moana Park owner Dan Barker has turned a minus into a plus in making wine at his boutique winery in Hawke’s Bay. 

 For a winemaker, an intolerance to sulphides might be considered a drawback – “I sneeze like a little girl, and my eyes get itchy” – but it’s one of the reasons the winery has gone down the low allergen pathway.

“We don’t put additives in our wines.  It’s about making wine with grapes and only grapes,” says Dan, who has also been a flying winemaker for Baillie-Grohman Estate in Creston, British Columbia, for some years.  

Moana Park’s white wines are fined using bentonite and, as he points out, aluminium silicate is basically mud.  That removes the risk of protein haze and, settling “pretty hard”, it is filtered out.

“Reds get nothing, so you may find tartrate crystals and a bit of tannin at the bottom of a glass of the matchless Moana Park Reserve Syrah 2013,” says Dan, proudly pointing out his limited edition wine as it rolls off the winery’s recently acquired bottling line.

A jovial personality, he clearly relishes thinking outside the square.  

The former Aucklander majored in computing for his Bachelor of Science and, running restaurants in the city, he says he was always around wine.

In pursuit of a more hands-on career, he moved to Hawke’s Bay—“the fine wine capital of New Zealand” – and enrolled in the Bachelor of Wine Science, combining EIT studies with working at Corban’s, Matariki and Sacred Hill.  

“I valued those opportunities,” he says.  “It was about applying what I had learnt to the product.”

In 2004, Dan won the top student wine trophy at the Hawke’s Bay A & P Show’s wine awards and that same night he was offered the job of winemaker at Moana Park.

Four years later, he and wife Kaylea bought the business, which is based in Puketapu.  They also own vineyards in Gimblett Gravels, which is where they live.  

The Puketapu block is not the best viticultural land, he concedes.  But from a tourism perspective, it is well-located for the cellar door circuit.   

That vision is driving changes that include the creation of an on-site wetland and further tree planting to enhance the former woolshed, now housing Moana Park’s cellar door and offices.  

The Barkers are a match made in commercial heaven.  Kaylea, who was already dating Dan when she joined the winery team, has a Bachelor of Business Studies and Bachelor of Computing Systems. 

Dan says handcrafting wines without the use of additives calls for a savvy team.  He and Kaylea believe in nurturing talent and support and encourage staff in their studies.  

It’s clearly a formula that works.  Moana Park won Decanter’s best Viognier in 2010 and 2011, a judging that attracts something like 15,000 entries, and the business is mobilising to meet ramping up demand from the Chinese market.  

From 2500 cases in 2008, the winery’s production increased to 25,000 cases this year.

However big it grows, however, it seems unlikely that Moana Park will lose its alternative approach to winemaking under the Barkers’watch. 

Having pulled out old Sauvignon Blanc vines behind the winery, the 10ha block is about to be planted in Viognier and Chardonnay but will also include two hectares of experimental varieties such as Arneis and Gruner Vetleiner.

“That’s for fun and for the cellar door,” says Dan, “tiny blocks to make small batches of wines.” New Zealand, he believes, “is so set on single varietal Sauvignon Blanc.  So we want to have a bit of fun.”

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