Growing up in Wellington did not stop Dave Sutton from falling in love with growing plants.
Thankfully, he had an inspirational horticulture teacher who, knowing the difficulties of getting into the industry as a city boy, encouraged him to look into a career in the wine industry.
"He suggested winemaking as a way to kind of fuel my passion for primary industries while also allowing me to do the travel that I always wanted to do. And it really has been a perfect career for me. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else, to be honest."
Sutton studied at Lincoln and then travelled the world working on wineries and has done harvests in France, California, Chile, Spain and Germany as well as several in Australia and many around New Zealand.
"I’ve worked in Ukraine twice and, yeah, I’ve really straddled the world of wine."
In 2010, he moved to Central Otago to do a harvest and never looked back.
"It’s just such an incredible place. I get a feeling in Central Otago that I’ve never experienced anywhere else. It was something to do with the monumental scale of the landscape, just arriving there and seeing these incredible mountains heading up into the sky and the lakes and the rivers and something about the quality of the light. It’s so bright, there’s something magical about Central Otago.
"And once I felt that feeling for the first time, I kind of knew that if the opportunity ever arose, this is where I would live."
He was working for a large contract wine maker which made wines for different vineyards in Central Otago when he made a wine for Rhonda Lloyd and her husband, owners of what was to become Te Kano.
The next year they asked him if he wanted to work for them full-time and he agreed. That was 2016 and back then the vineyard did not have an email address or a shovel.
"We have built this company right through to what it is today, which is a multi-tiered and very successful wine brand."
Te Kano has four vineyards including sites at Bannockburn, Northburn and the Waitaki Valley which produce pinot noir, pinot gris, blanc de noir, riesling, chardonnay and rose.
"We are one of the only wineries in Central Otago that grows all their own grapes and bottles all their own wine. It touches nobody’s hands but ours, from growing the grape right through to bottling it. Grape to glass, it’s truly our wine."
Sutton’s Life Rose has won three gold medals and two silvers at Australian and New Zealand competitions before the New World Wine Awards which awarded it Champion Rose for 2024. "It’s had a fantastic track record, winning numerous gold medals, but this is the first time it’s won a champion trophy. We are over the moon."
The judges described the Life Rose, as pale salmon in colour and "elegant and dry with fine aromatics and a vibrant finish".
Mr Sutton has been making the rose from Te Kano’s Central Otago vineyards since 2017 using 100% pinot grapes, as he believes they make the best rose.
"It speaks to the importance of that wine to us. We treat it with the same treatment that some of our premium pinot noir blocks get. It’s a really important wine for us and it’s one that we put a lot of work and a lot of effort into."
Growing pinot noir grapes for rose is different from growing them for pinot noir, he says.
"We want to capture really bright red fruits and those kind of, I would describe them as crunchy characters such as red apple and watermelon, pink grapefruit, really kind of fresh and bright and delicious flavours."
That requires making sure they keep more shading over the grapes so they do not get sunburned. With premium pinot noir they open up the canopy to try to get more tannin ripeness.
"But for rose, we really are trying to get just really fresh fruit characters and protect those bunches as much as possible."
Over the years, they have refined the process and established which blocks on Te Kano’s vineyards grow the best rose grapes.
"We have a very intimate knowledge of the vineyards now. And it means that we’re growing that fruit specifically for that wine with a lot of attention to detail."
He puts the rose’s success down to a "fantastic" tight team right across the winemaking process from the vineyard to bottling and sales and marketing.
Over the past decade Sutton has also seen more of a focus and emphasis on growing quality rose in New Zealand, as opposed to just making it when a vineyard has too much pinot noir.
It has also become part of the accepted wine-drinking habits of many New Zealanders, blokes included.
"It’s just one of those wines which is for everybody and at every price point. So, there’s roses from $15 all the way up to $60.
"I feel that rose is now a premium wine. It’s not cheap and cheerful any more. It’s something that people really give a lot of thought and effort to."
Then there is also Te Kano’s mission and ethos to give back to the land, to make it better than how they found it. That is how the brand’s name came about as Te Kano means seed.
"It refers to a large and very old Kōwhai tree above our property. And we’ve always had an ambition to expand the native plantings and kind of regenerate the Northburn site. By taking seed off that tree and taking seed off other species, propagating them and spreading them across that landscape. And to date, we’ve been very successful with tens of thousands of native plants planted and the majority grown by us from seed that we have harvested on our land.
"So, it’s one thing to have a lofty ambition, but we’re following through with actual achievement. So, it’s a really fantastic feeling."
The success of the rose comes on what was a "phenomenal" growing season last year which created beautiful fruit without any major weather events.
It meant they were able to take their time, pick when the grapes were ready and put time into making the wine.
"There’s some years when you are forced into making wine just because that’s agriculture, right? And then other years you’re able to really dial it in and focus on style and think a lot about what is the wine that we want to make. And you can really craft your wine at your leisure."
This year got off to a slightly rockier start with frosts continuing a bit later.
"It’s just the nature of things. Nothing new, we’re prepared. It’s a few late nights for the vineyard team."
Other Central Otago wineries to make the Top 50 are Madam Sass, McArthur Ridge and newcomer Welcome Swallow.
See next week’s wine column for a review of Te Kano’s rose.
