We were in the middle of a raging river, no vineyard to be seen, with containers, trees and even a car with its lights still on sweeping past. After seeing our four bay tractor shed get swept away like a pile of match sticks I started to lose it a little and it was then that Ella put her hands on my face and said calmly \u201cdon\u2019t worry mummy, somebody will save us\u201d. <\/p>\n
We knew too well this was not going to happen but it snapped me out of my catastrophising and made me determined to keep it together for the kids. We\u2019d always called her our little brave blossom and that night she lived up to her name.<\/p>\n
Petane Wine\u2019s \u201cBrave Blossom\u201d Ella Barber (front) with her namesake wine, parents Sarah Johnson, Philip Barber and brother Jimmy with the family Kombi rescued from the cyclone. Photo \/ Mark Story<\/p>\n
The p\u00e9t nat style predates champagne by 250 years. Talk us through it.<\/p>\n
Philip Barber: P\u00e9t nat is a natural, living wine \u2014 rustic, energetic, and with an unfussy fizz. It\u2019s typically dry and lower in alcohol than traditional sparkling wines, as the fruit is picked earlier to retain its natural acidity. <\/p>\n
The wine is bottled before primary fermentation has finished, so the indigenous yeast are still active and chewing through the sugars, converting them into CO2. <\/p>\n
All of that energy and activity is captured in heavy glass designed to handle the pressure and sealed with a crown cap like a craft beer.<\/p>\n
After resting through the cooler months, the wine is ready to be chilled hard and cracked open. We always start a party with a p\u00e9t nat.<\/p>\n
How tough is it to pivot when your vines are wiped out and you need to work with grapes that aren\u2019t your own?<\/p>\n
Philip: Looking after a vineyard can be incredibly rewarding when you get it right, but it\u2019s also hard work and hugely time consuming. Once I got over the initial shock and despair of losing the vineyard, I found the pivot reasonably stress-free. <\/p>\n
After 20 years in the industry you have a network of growers and winemakers that you know and have become friends with. The outpouring of support after the flood \u2014 from the winemaking community and beyond \u2014 also played a huge part in helping us rebuild and move forward.<\/p>\n
In the three years since the flood, I\u2019ve been working fulltime for our Esk Valley neighbours at Linden, managing their hillside vineyards and working alongside winemaker Alex Hendry. <\/p>\n
We\u2019ve also downsized our own range from 12 wines to six, focusing on syrah, chardonnay, p\u00e9tillant naturel, late harvest edelzwicker, and sauvignon blanc.<\/p>\n
In a wider sense, has the cyclone changed your approach to making wine? <\/p>\n
Philip: I have always focused on making wine in a low-to-no intervention way, hand picking grapes from one place for single site expression and picking the highest quality grapes from a given season \u2013 so this hasn\u2019t changed. <\/p>\n
I believe Hawke\u2019s Bay is home to some of the best vineyards in New Zealand because of the diverse terrain and sub appellations: coastal sites, river valleys, hillsides and stony ex-river terraces. <\/p>\n
All this makes for a diverse group of growers who have a deep understanding of their sites. These days our fruit comes from Mangatahi Valley, Esk Valley, Whatatutu in north Gisborne and any awesome hillside site I am lucky enough to be given access to. <\/p>\n
Three years on, what does Ella think of being the poster girl on a wine label?<\/p>\n
Sarah: She loves having a wine named after her. She doesn\u2019t grasp the concept of artistic licence so can\u2019t understand why mum gave her pink hair, but other than that it makes her \u2018feel happy and famous\u2019.<\/p>\n
The delicious drop was made more cloudy by my graceless attempt at opening. Photo \/ Mark Story<\/p>\n
Mark Story\u2019s review: Petane Brave Blossom P\u00e9t Nat 2025, 11.9%, $37.<\/p>\n
This was foreign to me – a sparkling wine that\u2019s cloudy and cork-less.<\/p>\n
Sadly, its cyclonic theme continued when I levered off the crown cap and immediately lost a quarter of the bottle all over the deck.<\/p>\n
Thisamateur hadn\u2019t chilled it enough.<\/p>\n
The error churned up the natural sediment. But that actually worked for me – cloudy meant creamy in this divine drop. <\/p>\n
Delicious strawberry and vanilla but dry enough to ensure it didn\u2019t get too playful. <\/p>\n
I rued the ham-fisted opening and lost froth as it would have been easy to neck another exquisite glass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We were in the middle of a raging river, no vineyard to be seen, with containers, trees and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[156365,2684,34257,89438,12413,49268,22773,33959,14032,33092,32896,119131,59038,18482,564,83891,71,33960,10937,296,8274,5338,32573,111,43,139,69,226141,123760,6695,801,6967,26655,5436,427,165,19054,2217,226140,1299,1754,29157,102],"class_list":["post-442738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-barber","tag-beverage","tag-blossom","tag-brave","tag-chaos","tag-chats","tag-comeback","tag-cyclone","tag-daughter","tag-deputy","tag-editor","tag-ella","tag-esk","tag-floodwater","tag-food","tag-foodie","tag-from","tag-gabrielle","tag-hunt","tag-into","tag-johnson","tag-makes","tag-mark","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-petane","tag-philip","tag-regions","tag-rising","tag-sarah","tag-sparkling","tag-stars","tag-story","tag-their","tag-turned","tag-valley","tag-valleys","tag-who","tag-wine","tag-wines","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}