Their Blondie white wine has just won the award for innovation at the Wine New Zealand Trade event held in Auckland.
Blondie, as it's name suggests, is a white wine and it was made to fill a niche at the Wooing Tree cellar door, where it has been well received by people coming to taste the Wooing Tree wines.
Wooing Tree co-owner Steve Farquharson asked winemaker Carol Bunn if she could make a white wine from Pinot Noir grapes (which are red) and Ms Bunn was keen to take up the challenge.
"The red colour in Pinot is from the skin of the grapes, which colour the juice in the tank. The less contact the skin has with the juice, the lighter the colour."
The 2006 vintage had very big berries for some reason, so there was less skin and more juice, meaning Ms Bunn was able to make a truly white wine.
The 2007 vintage had very small berries and was a real challenge, with the final result a strawberry blonde wine.
For this year's vintage they became even more innovative "trying to keep Blondie blonde", Mr Farquharson said. The picked early and pressed straight away. They ended up with pink juice but it wasn't as pink as the year before.
Several other methods were tried and they finally produced a reasonably white wine again this year, which Mr Farquharson describes as "a delicate champagne colour."
Ms Bunn said the exercise was great for the younger winemakers, who were challenged to come up with ideas and were fascinated by how it could be done.
"We really do deserve this innovation award as we certainly did have to be very innovative to get the result," she said.
