KEVIN JUDD GOES BLUE SKY AFTER CLOUDY

BANG THE FORKY TAKES A SPELL AFTER VINTAGE

Cloudy Bay Co-founder Announces New Venture
Greywacker Gets Big Rock Star Relaunch
by PHILIP WHITE

Kevin Judd, who co-founded Cloudy Bay - and therefore the New Zealand sauvignon blanc explosion - with David Hohnen twenty five years ago, this morning announced the completion of his first vintage at Greywacke, his new winemaking adventure.

Juddy has named the new brand after the layered grey sand and mudstones that form most of the highest mountain ranges of New Zealand, and therefore contribute greatly to its soils. Securing the name is a coup: the equivalent of somebody using Ayers Rock or Terra Rossa as a trade mark in Australia, where Brian Croser is likely to be the only winemaker who uses the name of a geological group for his brand, Tapanappa. While Croser’s major vineyard at Wrattonbully, Naracoorte, has geology as far removed as one could get from the tapanappa group, at least Jud’s new business and fruit sources are in Greywacke up to their chins.

Juddy’s first solo Marlborough harvest began on 3 April when his crew hand-picked pinot noir from the Yarrum Vineyard, on the ridge between Brancott and Ben Morven Valleys in the south of Marlborough. The last fruit was botrytised gewurztraminer from the Brancott Valley floor.


“I am primarily sourcing fruit from Ivan and Margaret Sutherland’s vineyards in and around Marlborough’s Southern Valleys” Judd said this morning. “They are prime viticultural sites with mature vineyards that contain a mixture of the best possible clones grown under yield restricted vineyard management regimes.

“Ripe fruit and relatively hands-off winemaking techniques will be used to create concentrated wines with personalities that express the incredible varietal intensity typically enjoyed in New Zealand’s Marlborough region.”

Judd statement explained that he feels “very privileged” to have been with Cloudy Bay from its inception.

“It has been a unique, rewarding and thoroughly enjoyable journey. Nevertheless, it has been fantastic fun pulling on the gumboots again.

JUDDY GOES MONO: IS IT SO WE CAN'T SEE JUST HOW GREY HE IS?

The first Greywacke wine, a sauvignon blanc, will be released through Negociants in September. It will be followed by pinots gris and noir, obviously a botrytic gewurz, and a more feral, barrel-aged Te Koko style savvy-B in due course.

To view Juddy’s phenomenal photographic site, click on any of these photographs. They're all his.