Maven Wines of New Zealand

"Maven" - noun - a person with special knowledge or experience; one who is dazzingly skilled in any field; an expert.

The Cravens Road vineyard, in Marlborough, occupies an extremely picturesque site backed by the Richmond Range, with the Wairau River just 200m from the vines. Cravens Creek winds through the vineyard and is an obvious feature. One characteristic is its relative uniformity: its deep silt loam soils, with moderate to high fertility and good water-holding capacity, promote greater consistency in fruit development and maturation.

Due to its uniformity the block was planted in a North/South row orientation to maximise sun exposure using close vine spacings (2.4m rows x 1.8m vines) to reduce the yield per vine (thereby increasing the quality of the fruit). The entire vineyard was hand-planted over a 10-week period in the summer of 2003 resulting in the first small harvest of 2005.