Johanneshof Cellars is a small artisan boutique winery producing
wines from hand harvested grapes only sourced from their vineyards and
growers in Marlborough on New Zealand’s South Island.
It is jointly
owned and operated by Edel Everling a fifth generation winemaker from
Ruedesheim, Rheingau, Germany and Warwick Foley from Marlborough. Both
winemakers trained in the world-famous wine area of Rheingau in Germany,
where Edel studied for her degree in viticulture and oenology at
Geisenheim University while Warwick was a guest student there. They
continued to work for renowned wineries in Germany and New Zealand
before setting up Johanneshof Cellars in 1991.
Warwick and Edel make all wines on site combining the traditions of
the art of winemaking with modern technology. Their principals are to
crop at a very low level to enhance fruit quality and flavours,
harvesting the grapes prodomantly by hand and interfering as little as
possible with vines and wines. The estate vineyard is close-planted in
European tradition and not irrigated. The winery is build multi-levelled
to utilise gravity rather than pumping wines. A modern laboratory
ensures control of fermentations but is not seen as a substitute to
regular organoleptic evaluations of the wines.
Johanneshof’s adoration for Europe’s century old wine culture led
Edel and Warwick to establish New Zealand’s first underground rock
cellar tunnelled into solid sandstone, 50 meters long and 20 meters deep
underground.
The Underground Cellar Established 1993
The cool, stable temperature and high natural humidity of this unique
cellar provide ideal storage conditions to allow the maturation of
wines in French Barriques and German barrels. In this traditional cellar
Johanneshof’s flagship wine, the Methode Traditionnelle ‘EMMI’ is
fermented in its bottle and aged on its yeast lees for more than five
years.