Matthews Lane Vineyard Wairau Valley
Our Matthews Lane vineyard is in the heart of the Wairau Valley in Marlborough. Made up of two vineyards Hunter and Aitkens, premium Sauvignon Blanc is farmed on both.
Our Matthews Lane vineyard produces fruit with intensity and purity. There is a lot of variation throughout the Matthews Lane vineyard, producing characteristics of citrus and lime through to fleshy stonefruit, pineapple through to intense gooseberry.
The vineyard is 3.8km to the Wairau river and 12km from the coast. The soil is light free draining.
The premium Sauvignon Blanc portion of the vineyard goes into our The August 1888 and Single Vineyard Selection wines. We spur prune these portions to increase the concentration and quality of the fruit. With this technique the yields are really low, therefore not a lot of people do it. We do it because it reduces the bunch size and berry size and the bunches are looser, this means better quality fruit and therefore higher quality wine.
We are committed to an organics culture in our viticulture management throughout all of our vineyards. All of our fruit is sustainably grown and certified, we always ensure that we work to best practice. For example we recycle all waste; we have invested in an extensive composting programme; we use EM (effective microbials) throughout the year which ensures we have the best microbial environment in the vineyard; we plant complex inter-row cover crops which helps with aerating content and belding the soil. We are committed to reducing the use of pesticides, weed sprays, systematic fertilisers.
We have supplied over one million vine cuttings to nurseries in Marlborough from the Aitken’s block, so many of the region’s vines have originated from our Matthews Lane vineyard.
