Pyramid Valley

The Free Bacchus Story

Mike Weersing and Claudia Elze spent fifteen years looking for clay over limestone before they bought anything at all. New Zealand has very little of it. The search ended at Waikari in 2000, and the entire estate exists because of a soil decision taken before a single vine went in.

They then planted at 10,000 to 12,000 vines a hectare, three to four times the local norm and much closer to Burgundy than to New Zealand. High density forces the vines to compete with each other for water and nutrients, and it multiplies every operation in the vineyard — pruning, training, picking — by the same factor. Nothing about it is cheaper and nothing about it is easier.

It was the first New Zealand vineyard established biodynamic from inception rather than converted later: four small named blocks on a clay-over-limestone amphitheatre, farmed to strict biodynamic principles from the beginning. There was nothing to undo, which is a materially different proposition from converting an existing vineyard.

Weersing died in 2020. Pyramid Valley is now owned by Smith & Sheth, with new plantings under way.

Whether a founder’s system survives a change of ownership is a question no certificate answers. It is worth asking of any estate built around one person’s conviction, and this one was built around a conviction about soil that took fifteen years to act on.