Quartz Reef

The Free Bacchus Story

Rudi Bauer trained in Gumpoldskirchen and Krems, came to New Zealand from Austria on a six-month visa in 1985, and in 1996 put vines on bare ground at Bendigo. Central Otago at that point had a handful of experimental plantings and no reputation at all.

The sparkling wine began as a hedge. Pinot Noir was unproven in the region, so Bauer used the variety’s flexibility to make traditional-method sparkling as insurance in case the still wine did not work. It has become one of the things the estate is best known for, which is not usually how hedges turn out. Beneath the vineyard lies the largest quartz reef deposit in the country, and that is where the name comes from.

The estate went biodynamic in 2007 and took Demeter certification in 2011, alongside BioGro organic. Bauer has been unusually direct about why it took so long: Bendigo is a hard site and he was afraid of failing on it.

Bendigo now accounts for something like a quarter of Central Otago’s production.

The problem he still names as unresolved is weeds. Controlling them on a steep, rocky site without herbicide is what an organic certificate consists of day to day — not preparations and cow horns, but somebody dealing with weeds the hard way, every year.