WHAT I’VE LEARNED | Michael Brajkovich MW
The acclaimed Kumeu River is something of an outlier in New Zealand, based just outside Auckland and known primarily for its Burgundian-tinged Chardonnays. The family-owned winery’s roots can be traced back to modern-day Croatia – as winemaker Michael Brajkovich MW explained when we sat down with him before his recent sold-out masterclass at the London Club…
‘My grandfather first came to New Zealand from Dalmatia [modern-day Croatia] as a teenager in 1902, and worked for 15 years as a gum digger in the far north. Kauri gum was one of New Zealand’s biggest exports – it’s the resin from conifers found in the pit of tree, buried deep in swamps. It was extremely tough work, but the Dalmatians were hard workers – they would dig deeper than the English.’
‘He went back to Croatia with a bit of money in his pocket, met my grandmother and had three children. But the 1930s were very turbulent, and he ended up coming back with his family in 1937, looking for a better life.’
‘In 1944, they put down £200 as a deposit on the property at Kumeu where we still live today. It was essentially a dairy farm – 18 acres – but also had an orchard with pumpkins, strawberries and half an acre of vines, so my dad decided to start making wine. He knew the basics – back in Croatia, if you had a bit of land and some vines, or knew someone who did, everybody made a bit of wine. They weren’t wealthy people and wine was the cheapest form of calories.’
‘They started off making sherry and port style wines, and did pretty well. My father was really keen on table wines, though – dry reds became quite popular with service men returning from Italy after the war – but he was aware he’d never had a proper winemaking education. Which is why I ended up going to Australia…’
‘There was no oenology school in NZ – just agriculture colleges – so I went to Roseworthy in Adelaide. It was when I came back in 1982 that things got serious. We had to convince my mother that we weren’t going to make fortified wines anymore – it was a good income, whereas New Zealand Chardonnay wasn’t really a thing. We had some very upset customers when we stopped making sherry and port, because they used to drink a lot of it.’
‘There were some scares along the way. We went all in on Merlot at one stage. We’d bought a plot of 100 acres. A couple of years later, there was a big financial crisis, and interest rates hit 19%. We sold most of the land off to pay the bills, and kept 20 acres – all Merlot. I can remember when the total Merlot harvest in New Zealand was 80 tons, and 50 of them were ours.’
‘In 1983, I went to Bordeaux and did an internship under [Pétrus winemaker] Jean-Claude Berrouet. I remember getting the bus from Libourne to Pomerol, and when I arrived, it turned out the guy who did the vinification at Château Magdelaine had had a heart attack, and was convalescing. So they said, ‘OK, you’re in charge.’ I was like, ‘Really?’ A guy used to come in the morning to show me a few things, then the rest of the day, I was there on my own, doing pump overs. At 12 o’clock I’d lock up and go for lunch, then come back and do it all again. ’83 Magdelaine is probably the best red wine I’ll ever make.’
‘Sadly, New Zealand Merlot never really caught on, and we converted the Merlot vineyards to Chardonnay in the early 2000s. As a result, we’ve picked up a lot of technical things from Burgundy rather than Bordeaux. We like that style of wine and there are a lot of similarities in the type of cool-climate conditions and fruit profile we get. The white Burgundies we like share some of the reductive characters you see in our Chardonnays – gun flint, struck match. That can be a bit edgy for some people, but we like it – it adds to the minerality element. You just have to be careful not to overdo it, otherwise the wine will taste harsh.’
‘The most exciting thing that’s happening today is our Rays Road vineyard in Hawke’s Bay. We were looking for a site with good limestone terroir, and we bought it in 2017. It used to be owned by Trinity Hill, as a joint venture with Pascal Jolivet of Sancerre, so it was mainly planted to Sauvignon Blanc, with a bit of Pinot Noir, but we knew we could fix that. We replanted all the Sauvignon with Chardonnay and kept the Pinot.’
‘We used to make a Sauvignon Blanc back in the 80s, in a Bordeaux style, with barrel fermentation, rather than the Marlborough style. It worked OK, but we thought our Chardonnay was much better, so we got rid of it. Then, in the early 2000s, our agent pushed us to produce a Marlborough Sauvignon, because everybody else was, so we started buying grapes and made one, in a pretty simple style. But we have no reputation for Sauvignon, and we couldn’t establish any differentiation, so we abandoned it.’
‘We’ve been predicting the peak of Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc for years, and always been proved wrong. But this year things have changed. There’s an oversupply, and there’s quite a few wineries with full tanks. Prices have softened and demand is down.’
‘Sauvignon Blanc is such an important part of the whole New Zealand story. It’s about 80% of the total production. But we do so many other things better, with more finesse. I think Chardonnay is by far the country’s best white, and Pinot Noir our best red. Sparkling is one to watch, too. And we’ve planted a bit of Nebbiolo that I think could be quite interesting. I love the wines of Barolo and Barbaresco so we thought we’d give it a go. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll make a rosé.’
‘I’m convinced that the next generation is terrified of the prospect of stuffing things up. If they’re part of a successful business, they’re not sure if they want the responsibility. They also see how much hard work it is. My nephew is doing a stage at Domaine Dujac right now, so hopefully he’ll get involved here when he comes back. My daughter is a model and my son’s a musician. We just hope that when they get into their 30s and they’ve done a few other jobs, they realise how good a life running a winery is. You don’t necessarily make a whole lot of money, but you have a great time doing it.’
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