Hawkesridge

 Hawkes Ridge Wine Estate is a family owned, boutique winery situated  20kms West of Hastings in the Hawkes Bay.  
The members of our family are Bob Armstrong, Carolyn Armstrong, Douglas Haynes and Julie Haynes.  Winemaker Brent King also works at Hawkes Ridge. 

 At Hawkes Ridge we encourage wine drinkers to “try something different!”  Along with well known varieties Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris we produce lesser known varieties Viognier, Semillon and Tempranillo.  This gives wine drinkers the opportunity to try some wine varieties that they may not have tasted before. 

 We are passionate about wine and chose to plant varieties that we enjoy drinking and are suited to the site.  The vineyard is north facing with very warm daytime temperatures and cooler night time temperatures compared with other wine growing areas in the Hawkes Bay.  This temperature variation ensures the grapes ripen slowly and develop to their full potential with flavours unique to the site.

The vines were planted in two stages:  The Semillon, Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and were planted in 2002 and the Viognier and Tempranillo in 2004.  There are over 32,000 vines planted over 30 acres on our top river terrace.  We generally limit the vineyard to approximately 80 tonnes of fruit.  These low cropping levels ensure peak flavor development.  Our peak production level is approximately 5000 cases a year.

There are also 5000 olive trees on the property.  At this stage we sell all the olives to the Village Press for oil.

The first vintage under the Hawkes Ridge label was in 2008 and only a very small volume was made due to contractual commitments.  In the previous years Hawkes Ridge had contract grown for Sileni, Villa Maria and Elephant Hill while Douglas went to EIT to become qualified as a winemaker.

All the reds are handpicked and fermented in 2000kg packages and are essentially hand processed wines with hand plunging and absolute minimal use of mechanical devices such as pumps.  The winery is set up so we can gravity feed to help with this.  The Viognier is entirely handpicked as is at least 50% of the Pinot Gris and Semillon.  These grapes are then whole bunch pressed using low pressure which results in very clean juice that requires little, if any fining.  The 2008 Viognier was entirely barrel fermented, however we have settled in future vintages to do 30% barrel fermentation on all the whites with the remainder fermented in small 600-1200 litre stainless tanks with many different yeasts used to add complexity.  As an example, for our 5 wine varieties made in 2010 we had 76 individual ferments.

We are trying to make wines for lovers of good wine and concentrate on retaining the fruit and promoting the mouth feel of the wines.

The red swoop on the Hawkes Ridge logo represents the two ridges on our property and the black swoop represents one of the Hawkes that live on our property, and ride the warm air currents on a summers day.