Opposites Attract
Burgundy has an opposite. It may also have an equal.
Pleasure | Culture | Craft
Stories told and wines shared by the people who know it best
Sharing the pleasure, culture and craft of fine wine, and the stories of Pyramid Valley, Smith & Sheth and Lowburn Ferry.
Opposites Attract
Burgundy has an opposite. It may also have an equal.
Natural
Soil your undies: a simple soil test
Burying cotton underwear in the vineyard sounded mad, until we dug up one pair almost fully decomposed and the other barely touched. Nick Paulin on the serious soil biology behind our most talked about experiment.
Modern
Technology, nature and the human hand
Shaker tables, gentle destemmers, gravity fed fermenters and concrete tulipes all shape a wine, yet none of them make a decision. Huw Kinch on how technology and the human hand work together to make wines that speak of their place.
Art
Crafting icons: the symbols behind Pyramid Valley's wine labels
Design
From farm to label – blending nature, spirit and legacy
Creating the Colours Collection label was less a design project than an exploration of what Pyramid Valley stands for. Cyanotype artist Annemarie Hope-Cross and designer Helen Milner share how vineyard clippings and painted colour became a tribute to the wild cousins of our range.
Pleasure | Culture | Craft
Exploring the craft of New Zealand wine through culture, design, and escape
From farm to label – blending nature, spirit and legacy
Creating the Colours Collection label was less a design project than an exploration of what Pyramid Valley stands for...
Kaitiakitanga – Kiwi stories and case studies
At Pinot Noir New Zealand 2025, Steve Smith MW asked the room a pointed question, how can we be content with sustaina...
Nasturtium – colour and culinary use
The nasturtium blooming on our North Canterbury Orange label has travelled from South America to Spanish gardens, Lin...
Soil your undies: a simple soil test
Burying cotton underwear in the vineyard sounded mad, until we dug up one pair almost fully decomposed and the other ...
Limestone - Holy grail or charismatic illusion?
One soft, slowly dissolving rock is synonymous with great wine, and it is extremely rare in Aotearoa New Zealand. Ste...
Viper's bugloss: a treasure trove to share
Known here as blue borage, Echium vulgare is a weed to farmers, a top tier honey plant to bees and the namesake of ou...
Riparia Gloire: vine husbandry over genetics
Our Snake's Tongue block turns out to be grafted to a rootstock most organic growers avoid, yet it has been dry farme...
It's Chardonnay time - Harvest Diary
Three years into our regenerative programme the Omahu vineyard feels alive, and today it gave us some of the most bea...
Time for a new conversation
Nature does not make wine, people do, which is why Steve Smith MW is uncomfortable seeing our Orange badged as a natu...
Spring cover crop update
Our autumn sown cocktail of black oats, clovers, radish, mustard, phacelia and spinach has burst into life this sprin...
The Cover Up (and our cover guy)
National Viticulturist Nick Paulin talked cover crops, regenerative viticulture and buried underwear with New Zealand...
Capturing the essence of Viper’s bugloss – Our Snake’s Tongue artistry
Botanical artist Jo Ewing spent hours in our Waikari vineyard before drawing the blue borage that became the Snake's ...
Harvest watch 2026
From Hawke's Bay's coolest spring in memory to Central Otago's patient wait for consistency, every estate has a diffe...
Harvest in pictures
Photographer Richard Brimer took a road trip through our three regions during the 2026 harvest, capturing the estates...
Destiny
It seems our foundation vineyard for Pyramid Valley was always destined to be a great site for genuinely cool climate...
Kererū Road Chardonnay: Inspired by the great wines of the Mâconnais
Pyramid Valley has returned to Hawke's Bay, this time for Chardonnay, with a parcel at Linda and Ian Quinn's Two Terr...
Like seeing the Stones in ’62: The beauty and brutality of Waitaki
Grant Taylor of Valli calls the Waitaki Valley a frontier, a place where spring frosts and tiny yields buy wines of e...
Wine is having an awkward time
Challenged by neo prohibitionists and overlooked by the young, wine is in an awkward moment. Steve Smith MW argues th...
Is Albariño the Next Great White Wine? It Depends
Albariño is white wine's wild child, a peasant prima donna that has thrived in Galicia for a thousand years and almos...
Deep Roots - reflecting on V23 with Daren Clark
Daren Clark came to Pyramid Valley for the 2023 vintage through The Roots Fund, and left with a different way of seei...
A conversation at Bacash
At a Pyramid Valley dinner in South Yarra, a guest revealed she found us through the blue borage flower on the Snake'...
Taking the back streets
Our CEO MJ Loza takes a detour from Shrek to wine, by way of a twenty three year old son and a nineties pop lyric. Wi...
Crafting icons: the symbols behind Pyramid Valley's wine labels
The small alchemic symbols on every Pyramid Valley label are far more than decoration, each one distilling place, che...
Almost an island. Almost a weed.
CEO MJ Loza has a favourite word, peninsula, and a favourite plant, the dandelion, and both lead somewhere unexpected...
Grasses Study: A meditation on nature
Botanical artist Jo Ewing spent unhurried days in our Waikari vineyard, sketching the meadow grasses that grow alongs...
A three-act screenplay
Three exceptional consecutive vintages is almost unheard of in any wine region, and Hawke's Bay has just delivered it...
Technology, nature and the human hand
Shaker tables, gentle destemmers, gravity fed fermenters and concrete tulipes all shape a wine, yet none of them make...
Beautiful utility in British Racing Green
MJ Loza finally bought the Streetdog, a New Zealand designed electric motorcycle in British Racing Green with a cream...
Naturally managing acidity in Chardonnay at the press (without additions)
Waikari Chardonnay arrives in the cellar with a pH below three and acidity high enough to stall malolactic fermentati...
Introducing the 2024 Pyramid Valley Botanicals Collection
The 2024 season brought its surprises, but the personalities of these five special parcels remain unmistakable.
A new era for Smith & Sheth
After a decade of fine tuning our most distinguished vineyards, the 2024 vintage brings five single vineyard Hawke's ...
The 2023 Botanicals Collection
A spring snowstorm at Waikari took more than half our young shoots, leaving just 360 bottles of Field of Fire, while ...
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