Bubbly Birthday

CELEBRATE 40 YEARS

Daniel le Brun celebrates 40 years

Daniel and Adele le Brun look back at the joys and challenges of their early days of making méthode traditionelle in Marlborough.

It’s 41 years ago now but Daniel le Brun remembers his first trip to Marlborough as clear as day. “I was immediately convinced this was the place to be. The soil and the climate reminded me of Champagne in the best vintage years, but it happens every year here in Marlborough.”

There were no wineries back then. Just bare paddocks. Land prices were dirt cheap. Grapevines and rootstocks were nigh on impossible to come by. As was finance. It was difficult back then to get loans from banks because the wine industry was an unproven sector at the time, so Daniel luckily managed to get funding from the Development Finance Corporate and a group of investors but even that proved to have a time limit on it. Fortunately, it enabled him to get started.

This year Daniel turned 75. He, his wife Adele and their children, Virginie and Remy, are celebrating 40 years of making méthode traditionelle in New Zealand and they are doing so in typical Le Brun style – with a large glass of bubbles on hand. They were to have had a big celebration but COVID-19 came along, so they sent out their bubbles instead. Their Marlborough sparkling wine story sounds like a romantic runaway success, but it hasn’t all been plain sailing, says Daniel.

Asked what his biggest challenges were, he talks about restrictive land sub-divisions, raising money and starting in a region better known for farming than for winemaking, but another biggie was the launch of their wine in November 1985.

“It was not great timing. The Rainbow Warrior was sunk less than six months earlier so Kiwis were tipping