Bell Hill, New Zealand: the first visit to the vineyard that left me sad

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Most visits to vineyards and wine estates are uplifting. Occasionally, if the PR machine is cranked too hard, they’re fun. My February visit to Bell Hill in the North Canterbury hills of New Zealand’s South Island was the first that made me feel sad.

I had last visited Marcel Giesen and Sherwyn Veldhuizen in Waikari 18 years ago, at which point they were enthusiastically converting a former limestone quarry into a small wine estate. They wanted it to be completely artisanal and Burgundian: Giesen’s family not only own one of the largest wineries in north Marlborough, they also have a house in Puligny-Montrachet. A visit there in 1995 had made the couple “fall in love with Burgundy”, in their own words. They were young and hopeful perfectionists. When I visited Bell Hill in 2005 they still didn’t have electricity and lived in a kind of hut, albeit with high quality glasses of wine and some enviable bottles. Electricity and a proper house only arrived in 2009, 12 years after construction began.

While showing me and three other wine writers around the vineyard this year, Giesen recalled their initial excitement at spotting this unusual limestone outcrop, the revered bedrock of Burgundy’s Côte d’Or. “The white stones we saw sticking out of the grass were enough: what could we lose?”

“Twenty-six years of our lives,” Veldhuizen muttered through clenched teeth.

The couple really had the most terrible luck. Some of it was personal. In 2017, while fetching a bottle from Puligny’s cellar, Giesen hit his head and is still suffering the effects of a severe concussion. But most of their bad luck has been the result of weather calamities. In 2019, during the December flowering, he was so wet that he halved the potential harvest. In 2021, they lost about 35% of potential tops to the frost that hit in September. And, in October of last year, an unprecedented polar blast wiped out 80 percent of the 2023 crop and left the remaining growth at such a variety of different stages that all they’ve been able to harvest this year was a modest amount of sparkling wine source material.

Such shots are particularly difficult for a vineyard of only 3.18 hectares. Their closely planted Burgundian vineyards have always been meticulously worked by hand, first by them and now with the addition of three full-time employees. They have never deviated from the more laborious traditional techniques both in the cellar and in the vineyard and have been fully certified organic by BioGro since 2015.

“You may wonder how we make a living,” Veldhuizen noted wryly. “We can not.”

You could say more deceive them for planting an inauspicious site, but that would be unfair. In 1997 it would have been impossible to predict just how ferocious the effects of climate change would be. As Veldhuizen sadly noted in a recent email, “everywhere we look, here and abroad, seasonal conditions have become powerful and unpredictable.”

I’m just glad they were able to produce what they have given the outstanding quality of their Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs. After our somewhat daunting tour of their various frost-ravaged vineyard blocks, including the newest one, which Veldhuizen hand-planted herself (at the insanely high density of over 18,000 vines per hectare in some parts), we were treated for a tasting. This included four of their Chardonnays through 2010 and five Pinot Noirs through 2003, their first vintage, all with Kiwi screw cap rather than natural Burgundy cork.

The wines looked stunning and much younger than the NZ norm. The 2016 Chardonnay is just starting to open up. The 2004 Pinot Noir is truly Burgundy’s Grand Cru quality.

So, what about the future? To round out their small 2023 harvest right on Bell Hill, fellow organic devotees Rudi Bauer of Quartz Reef and Duncan Forsyth of Mount Edward in Central Otago (one of the few New Zealand wine regions to go unscathed in 2023) offered to sell Giesen and Veldhuizen some of their Pinot Noir grapes to be vinified at Bell Hill Cellar. And the Giesen family has provided some Marlborough Chardonnays from their organic Clayvin vineyard.

Veldhuizen is trying to put a positive spin on it. “This is all going to be a new chapter for Bell Hill spreading the risk of relying on just one growing region,” he wrote to me. “It also gives the potential to add to what we do here in the most respectful way. . . The frost was a catalyst to get this vision moving.

Now they are starting to think about what will happen to Bell Hill when they retire. You have built such a reputation for quality that you deserve to pass into the most understanding hands.

Bell Hill’s 2016 Chardonnay is just starting to open. The 2004 Pinot Noir is truly Burgundy’s Grand Cru quality

A nearby vineyard has already successfully changed hands. Two years after Bell Hill took off, Giesen and Veldhuizen gained some like-minded neighbors, Mike and Claudia Weersing, who established another high-quality and densely planted vineyard in Waikari. Pyramid Valley was biodynamic from the start, a real rarity in New Zealand. It is now owned by wealthy American investor Brian Sheth and NZ Master of Wine Steve Smith, the team behind Smith & Sheth wines.

They invested in a brand new cellar, in fact a large shed, and thought they’d be ready in time for the 2021 harvest, ultimately sacrificed to the frost. However, as in Bell Hill, the vineyard is being expanded. I hope their optimism is not misplaced.

Talented Pyramid Valley winemaker Huw Kinch was drawn to Martinborough in the North Island and lives next door to the new winery with his three young daughters (who make up 10% of Waikari school pupils) and wife Amanda, whose cheese scones compensated considerably for the winds that whipped us as we walked through the vines. Smith conceded that these characteristic winds tend to reduce crops even in frost-free years, but he’s clearly enthusiastic about how Burgundian the limestone strata are here.

In another conversation, he previously noted that this area of ​​North Canterbury offers prospective winemakers some of the cheapest land in New Zealand because it is classified as agricultural rather than viticulture. (The price of the land is only part of the commitment: it may cost as little as around NZ$20,000, or £10,000, a hectare to purchase, but another NZ$150,000 per hectare would be required to develop.)

Given the recent trials and tribulations in this cool corner of North Canterbury, it seems unlikely that there will be a flurry of newcomers eager to invest there, but any lover of fine wine should be delighted that Bell Hill and Pyramid Valley exist to showcase that. which is possible, at least in some years.

Tasting notes, scores and suggested drink dates on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. Some international wholesalers on Wine-searcher.com

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