NZW Fellow
Rudi Bauer for service to New Zealand Pinot Noir SOPHIE PREECE
A FEW months after landing in New Zealand in 1985, Rudi Bauer felt disconnected and alone, homesick for the culture of Austria. But after a period of “whinging and whining”, the 25-year-old winemaker decided it was his responsibility to adapt, and to offer “new thinking” to New Zealand’s wine story. “You have the choice of, ‘dig yourself a hole and go home’, or ‘be a part of creating history’.” Nearly four decades on, the founder of Quartz Reef has made an extraordinary contribution to his adopted nation, having pioneered the Bendigo subregion, helped forge a reputation for Central Otago wines, and nurtured conversations about Pinot Noir, Central Otago, organic viticulture, and the place of winegrowing in New Zealand culture. Rudi grew up with a farming family outside of Salzburg, and moved to wine country outside Vienna when he was 15. He considered horticulture, viticulture, floriculture and market gardening as career options, and – luckily for New Zealand and its Pinot Noir chose wine. When he arrived at Mission Estate in 1985, New Zealand’s
modern wine story was just beginning, with its Sauvignon Blanc “discovered” in the United Kingdom, along with producers like Hunter’s and Cloudy Bay. “So, I was really just lucky enough to be at the beginning of New Zealand in this extraordinary growing phase,” he says. A six month job at Mission ex tended to four years as assistant winemaker, interspersed with vintages in California and Oregon, which whet his appetite for Pinot production. In 1989, Rudi moved to Central Otago to work with Rolfe Mills at Rippon Vineyard, one of just six wineries across the region back then, “and I effectively grew up with the community,” he says. In 1990 he helped Rolfe transition Rippon to organics, and in 1991 made the region’s first gold and trophy Pinot Noir. The same year, Rudi and his wife Suellen Boag found a hillside paddock on Bendigo Station, in an area once hallowed for the gold-bearing quartz reef that would give their wine its name. In the years since, Bendigo has “grown tremendously” and is now deemed an important subregion, responsible
Rudi Bauer
for a quarter of Central’s production. But back then there was nothing planted in the Cromwell Basin, “there was no Lake Dunstan yet, and I could visualise this land to be one day a vineyard,” Rudi says. He was inspired by 15 hectares of steep slope running in one north-facing stretch, “which you don’t see that often,” and could see the “end goal” of Quartz Reef, “but how to get there, I didn’t know.” He formed a partnership with John and Heather Perriam of Bendigo Station and Champagne-raised Clothilde Chauvet, then delved into the detail, working to understand the soils (arid clay, fine gravel and quartz) and find water,
then bring in 2km of power to access it. “Then the question of what variety? What rootstock? That all followed through after the first impulse.” The further they got in, the further he realised that this land “ticked the boxes and the action got clearer.” Rudi didn’t want to be blinkered by experience, so took his learnings from vintages in Austria, Germany, France, California and Oregon, and adapted them to the unique soils and climate of the site. “Not to copy something, but in actual fact to translate what it means for that land in Bendigo,” he says, comparing the philosophy to his own adaption – and translation -
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NZ WINEGROWER DECEMBER 2021/JANUARY 2022