Chapter 01: Starting the Journey

There’s a fault line running through New Zealand.

It runs the length of the South Island, a seam where two plates grind past each other, throwing up the Southern Alps on one side and pouring rivers of grey stone down the other. At its northern end it becomes the Wairau. That’s the valley our fruit grows in.

We didn’t name the wine after it to sound clever. We named it because everything we love about this country happens along that line. The snow. The rivers. The breaks on the east coast. The gravel our vines dig their roots into. One fault, one island, and just about every good day we’ve ever had.

We are not a cellar-door brand.

Alpine Rift is built for the day that starts before light and doesn’t go to plan. A swell shows up, so you go. There’s a seat free in the heli, so you take it. Someone texts at four and by six you’re standing on a beach with a fire going, no real idea how you got there, and no intention of leaving.

That’s the life this wine is made for. Not the tasting room. Not the white tablecloth. The tailgate, the tussock, the cold hands and the last of the light.

So here’s what we believe.

That a wine should be serious enough for the critics and casual enough for the sand. Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate gave it 94 points. We still drink it out of enamel cups.

That the best days are the ones you didn’t schedule.

That where a wine comes from should be somewhere you actually want to go.

That there should always be a case in the car.

Twelve months. Eight chapters.

So we packed a Land Rover and drove the length of the rift. From the winery gates in Marlborough to the ocean, and from the ocean up to the top of the mountain.

Chapter 01 starts where the wine does. First light over the Wairau, frost still sitting on the rows, keys in the Rover. A case in the back, a board on the roof, heli gear underneath.

From here we point south. Down State Highway 1 with the Pacific on our left. Into the cold water at Mangamaunu, where the left-hander runs forever and the wetsuit never quite dries. Crayfish from a caravan on the side of the road, eaten standing up. The long golden road through Mackenzie Country, big sky, no traffic. And then up, properly up, where the snow is and the only way in is a rotor.

It ends the way it should. A fire on a beach, boards in the sand, the last glass of the trip.

Pack light. Bring a jacket.

New chapter every month. Come with us.