The Woollaston connection: Wine and the muse, Part I

In a month or so I will pack my togs, beach bucket and spade and head north to Golden Bay for a week or two.

There I will stay - along with other members of the whanau - in a mud-brick house fashioned out of the ochre-red clays of the Parapara area.

It's a house that was built by former MP and Nelson Mayor Philip Woollaston many moons ago and passed into our family some time in the early eighties.

Philip is in the wine business these days and making his mark in this field, too.

A couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to attend the opening of his magnificent winery at Mahana in Nelson's Upper Moutere area.

They have clay there, too, but mostly they grow grapes in it. The pinot noir in particular seems to have a penchant for it.

The other day I tried out the Woollston Nelson Pinot Noir 2006 ($35) and I have to say that it is an excellent wine.

Slightly lighter in some respects than some of its Central Otago cousins but possibly (wash your mouth out, do I hear you say?) a touch more sophisticated, with lovely cherryish flavours, soft tannins and that attractive feature (admittedly common to many wines) of becoming more inviting with every glass.

It has a long finish, as the buffs like to say.

Seriously, this wine is an example of how good the Nelson pinot can be and if my somewhat distanced connection with Mr Woollaston is to be contrived as a likely cause of bias, I can suggest another Nelson pinot, the Te Mania 2007 Pinot Noir Reserve ($29.95) as an excellent alternative.

More expensive than your everyday quaffing wines to be sure, but cheaper than most first-rate pinots and a great match for the Christmas ham (or practically anything else you might be eating).

But back to that winery.

It's worth a visit for anyone who happens to be in the area, carved out of the hillside, its gallery carrying a roof carpeted in tussock.

It is built around a gravity-fed system with the grapes fed in on the top level and finding the way eventually, as wine, to the barrels in the basement via a further two or three floors.

This minimises the need for pumping the valuable juice around it - an action that is thought to compromise some of the more delicate flavour components that lend pinot its special character.

The wines at Woollaston Estates Ltd are made by Andrew Sutherland and among the other varietals to watch out for are the rieslings. Their pinot gris is no slouch either.

But apart from the wine, another reason to pass by is the extensive collections of sculpture and art in the surrounds.

The arts and wine are a match made in heaven and it is a virtue championed by the enterprise at Mahana.

This should come as no surprise, given that Philip is the son of celebrated New Zealand artist Toss Woollaston, after whom the tussock-roofed Gallery at the winery is named.

This stylish space displays changing exhibitions of contemporary work by New Zealand artists including Toss Woollaston, Laurence Aberhart, Elizabeth Thomson, Chris Charteris, Yuk King Tan and Katherine Madill.

There is also sculpture by Andrew Drummond, Bill Culbert, Neil Dawson and Marte Szirmay, among others.

Philip's partner in Woollaston Estates is ex-patriate American Glenn Schaeffer who is one of the most generous benefactors of the arts in New Zealand - lending his patronage to the celebrated Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University in Wellington.

Their joint love of the arts, beyond the exhibitions, is regularly evident at the winery.

Each January they sponsor the Woollaston Nelson Jazzfest, incorporating 5 days of jazz, and over 70 performances throughout the Nelson region.

In June the winery hosts a prominent New Zealand writer in residence and, as part of the Nelson Arts Festival in October, it sponsors the Woollaston Readers and Writers Programme. One Sunday a month it provides live music in the grounds.

If you are in the area this summer you could do a lot worse than check it out.

As I said, wine and the arts . . . something of an irresistible combination. In fact, enough almost to seduce even the most reluctant of drinkers.