Alan Limmer (pictured above) is one of the pioneers of the Gimblett Gravels, that special piece of vineyard land in Hawkes Bay. He’s also achieved recent celebrity status in the closures debate, where, as a trained (PhD) chemist he’s been able to provide some much-needed scientific rigour to discussions about sulfides, reduction and screwcaps.
He has two blocks in the Gravels, the first of which
was planted way back in 1983 (the first experimental plantings
here were 1981). Everything he makes comes from these, with the
exception of his Sauvignon Blanc. Altogether he has 25 acres on
the Gravels, of which 15–20 acres are in production.
The
big focus here is on Syrah, and winemaking is pretty
straightforward. ‘There seems to be something more to learn
every year’, says Limmer. ‘And the more you learn the less you
seem to do with the wines’.
Of his involvement in the closures debate, where he
became deeply unpopular in some quarters for suggesting that using
screwcaps with very low oxygen transmission runs the risk of
reduction problems, Limmer says that ‘it still occupies some of
my time’. He began by writing articles primarily for winemakers
and then saw that the whole issue was much bigger than this. He
put out a newsletter saying that there might be some problems with
screwcaps in 2002, and this was picked up by a local journalist.
He was particularly scathing about claims by screwcap supporters
that corks showed a one-thousand-fold level of variation in oxygen
transmission. ‘You only had to look at it for half and hour to
see that it was rubbish’.
Stonecroft's vineyard
