Welcome To Petries' Wine Rakaia
Don and Linda Petrie, with the advice of Daniel Schuster, first planted grapes on their Mid Canterbury farm, near Rakaia, 20 years ago. The first 16 acres were equally divided between Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. They now have 40 acres, mainly Pinot Noir. The 5 acre block of Riesling is also proving very successful.
Don has lived on this farm all his life although he did move up the hallway. For hybrid vigour he married a Canadian. When the vineyard was planted as an addition to the already varied farm activities, Don said, “ our lifestyle will be a direct reflection of how well the grapes do”.
The P on their label is the picture….. it stands for patience, perfection, personality, passing time with friends.. everything that goes into making Petries’ wine.
Petries’ is a wine created with care to be value for money, great tasting, at affordable prices.
Don and Linda have now leased the rest of the farm and, because of the vineyard, still have plenty to think about every day!
Regional History
Grapevines, Vitis vinifera, first arrived in Canterbury with the earliest French settlers, ten years
before the formal Canterbury Settlement in 1850. Michael Cooper wrote in The Wines and
Vineyards of New Zealand (1989, 230):
“French peasants who landed in 1840 at Akaroa on Banks Peninsula carried vine
cuttings, from which wine soon flowed for their domestic consumption.”
Yet it was to be only in 1978 that the first commercial vineyard, St Helena, was planted on
Coutts Island, 20 kilometres north of Christchurch. Cooper describes the climate of Canterbury
as more hazardous for wine production than districts further north, although nearer the Equator
than many European wine districts. However, it has one vital advantage over points further
north, which had been the major wine producing areas of New Zealand - low rainfall.
Canterbury’s long dry autumns, warm days and cool nights permits grapes to ripen slowly with
excellent flavours.
An edited extract from "A history of grape production and wine making in Canterbury..." By Rupert Tipples
