Chris Drummond
Highly acclaimed winemaking team from Nelson in New Zealand
- Pioneers in horticulture and agriculture in the region since the 1800's, the Drummonds now use their land-savvy passed down from generation to generation to produce their own wine.
- What started out as adding another string to their horticultural bow has now firmly taken over, with row upon row of aromatic vines replacing the family's apples, pears and kiwifruit.
- With 1 GOLD and 7 SILVER medals under their belts so far, this vineyard look set for stardom!
Chris Drummond's Story
Chris Drummond's Story
"I am actually a qualified accountant and not actually the winemaker but the reason I got into the industry is still interesting. My family have been involved in growing things for generations, my family dates back to Scotland, and in the late 1800’s came to NZ. Since then they have grown Hops, Tobacco, Apples, Pears, Kiwifruit, Vegetables and now Grapes. In 1999 we planted 50 acres of grapes, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir. At the time I was actually working for ENZA, and after that went to work for a Accountancy firm, as my interest grew in wine, I discussed with my family about producing our own wine, we originally planted grapes to supply a large winery in Marlborough so we ended up talking with their winemaker, Justin Papesch, about making a small portion of wine.
In 2003 we produced a few hundred cases of Chardonnay and it sold out within a few weeks. So in 2004 we produced a larger amount of Chardonnay along with Sauvignon Blanc, around 1000 cases of each from memory. This wine was award 4 ½ stars from several wine writers at the time so again sold well. During this time I was still working full time as an accountant, and did orders and marketing in the evening and weekends. It was very exciting seeing my wine on wine list and in retailer shops, we sent our first export shipment to Australia mid 2005 with our 5 star Sauvignon Blanc.
In December 2005 I finished with the accountancy firm, and we went into making wine, proper! 2006 and 2007 vintages went well, the winery we were dealing with in Marlborough got sold, and Justin their winemaker decided to come work for us, and we built our own 1000 tonne winery during 2007 so that in 2008 we harvested our own grapes in our own winery. We have built a contract winery, and make wine for 5 other vineyards in the Nelson region. In 2006 we purchased a more land, in the Moutere with heavier soils than our originally vineyard by the sea, so we have great options for blending or making single vineyard wines. Our Moutere vineyard has heavier clays with gravels below and we planted the vineyard with the correct clones and rootstock for the soils.
Our wines are grown by a family with 5 generations of farming in the Motueka, Nelson region. Many people talk about being pioneers of the wine industry, and that is okay, but we are pioneers of the land, having farmed land in the Motueka region since the late 1800’s so that gives us a great understanding of soils, climate and growing conditions so when you are drinking a bottle of Anchorage, you are actually drinking a lot of history! Other aspects to our wines, we have always made wines more consumer friendly but still handcrafted and stylistic to the Nelson region but they often don’t pick up that Gold medal as they don’t appeal to wine judges, but that is okay with us, as consumers buy our wine, not judges!
I think our greatest achievement was actually early on in 2005 when we receive a 5 stars in the Australian Winestate Magazine for our Sauvignon Blanc, since then achievements have been building our own winery, the development of our new Moutere vineyard and probably getting married last December although nothing to do with wine!"
