A serious accident caused Nick Mills to change his passion for skiing to winemaking.
To abuse a cliche, skiing’s loss was wine’s gain.
Mills was expected to represent New Zealand at the 1994 Winter Olympics, but the injury meant he needed a new focus.
So Mills went to France, where he worked for four years in the Burgundy region, obtaining qualifications in viticulture and biodynamic winemaking. A superb range of pinot noirs is now the product of that extensive training.
Mills was born about the same time his father Rolfe Mills started planting vines on the family sheep farm in 1974, on the edge of Lake Wanaka in Central Otago, New Zealand. This vineyard boasts one of the most beautiful locations of any wine estate in the world.
Photographs of the vineyard with the lake in the background usually adorn most New Zealand wine media events. The lake shimmers a clear yet luminous blue.
Winter frost remains a constant danger in Central Otago, but Lake Wanaka acts like “a big hot-water bottle,” Mills said. The core temperature of the lake only changes by 2 or 3 degrees Celsius from summer to winter.
The late Rolfe Mills experimented with a range of vines on the family property. Despite mockery from locals, Mills senior and his family persisted, planting the first commercial vineyard block in 1982 and focusing on pinot noir, riesling and gewurztraminer. Rolfe believed the land best suited these varieties.
The property has been in the Mills family for four generations, and wines are made in an old lambing barn. The estate is named after Emma Rippon, an ancestor of Rolfe Mills.
Nick Mills returned to Rippon in 2002 to take over as winemaker.
The estate’s vines are among the oldest in the region. Most were planted between 1985 and 1991, and 80 percent of the 15-hectare vineyard is planted on its own rootstock and receives no irrigation. The vineyard also offers one of New Zealand’s best examples of biodynamic methods.
I’ve been lucky enough to taste a range of vintages, on site and elsewhere, and believe Rippon wines truly reflect the terroir. Rippon’s schist-based soils produce wines that are layered and complex. To paraphrase Nick Mills, the wines have lift rather than weight, precision rather than opulence, and finesse rather than fullness.
The 2011 Rippon riesling has outstanding length and zippy acids mixed with a range of citrus flavors.
Nick Mills said a warm summer “put plenty of flesh on this wine.” The fruit from Rippon’s mature vines is memorable because over time the roots have burrowed into the schist rock below to extract intense flavors.
As Mills notes on the vineyard’s website, in his characteristic sense of humor, “lurking toward the end of the first mouthful is substantial phenolic power and it soon starts to take charge of the wine.” This is a riesling with a lovely sense of place.
The 2011 Rippon gewurztraminer also comes from mature vines. Mills said 2011 was the first really favorable year for this grape variety since 2003.
He pressed whole bunches slowly, and used natural yeasts for the fermentation plus extended lees contact. The result is a wine with remarkable grace plus a range of tropical fruit flavors.
But it is the estate pinot noirs that always captivate me. The fruit comes from the oldest vines on the estate, and their wine has an ethereal quality that is delightful and compelling — wines that one wants to drink glass after glass.
These pinots also get better with age, unlike a lot of pinots from Marlborough that should be consumed within five years. Rippon pinots offer subtle yet luscious fruit flavors, finesse and elegance that show they are at least as good as Premier Crus from Burgundy. Over time one could liken them to a Burgundy Grand Cru.
Rippon wines can be purchased online from the vineyard. The website shows the beauty of the region, though the photographs cannot match the sense of place and majesty of actually visiting.
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