New Zealand · Hawke’s Bay

Craggy Range

Estate winery in Martinborough and Hawke's Bay, founded by the Peabody family in 1998 under a 1,000-year family trust. Known for Te Muna Road Pinot Noir from 40-plus parcel Martinborough terraces and for Gimblett Gravels reds from Hawke's Bay.

The producer

Craggy Range farms on two different arguments about what New Zealand can do. At Te Muna Road in Martinborough, the estate grows Pinot Noir on terraced stony clay at the cool southern end of the North Island, eight clones spread across more than 40 individual parcels on 81.5 acres of terrace. In Hawke's Bay, ninety minutes north, it runs a separate operation on the Gimblett Gravels, a stony alluvial fan of former riverbed that produces dense, dark-fruited Bordeaux-style reds built for weight and a long finish. One producer, two distinct climates, two distinctly different bottles.

Terry and Mary Peabody founded the estate in 1998. Terry Peabody then structured ownership under a 1,000-year family trust, a legal arrangement that prevents any future sale. In 2018, the estate made its largest investment in fifteen years: a 132-hectare purchase adjacent to Te Muna, propagated with massal selection cuttings from the best-performing parcels. In 2024, the Te Muna Pinot Noir was awarded Best in Show at the Decanter World Wine Awards from more than 16,000 global entries, the only New Zealand wine to receive that designation at the competition.

Known for

Martinborough Pinot Noir, Gimblett Gravels Bordeaux-style red blend, barrel-fermented Sauvignon Blanc

Notable facts

The story

The Score from Te Muna

The results from the 2024 Decanter World Wine Awards arrived after twenty-six years of farming on the Te Muna terraces. More than 16,000 wines had been submitted from producers around the world. Around fifty received Best in Show, the competition's highest designation. Craggy Range's Te Muna Pinot Noir was one of them, scored at 97 points, and it was the only New Zealand wine in that group. Martinborough had spent most of the past two decades treated as a footnote to Central Otago in international Pinot Noir conversations, a regional assumption so settled that it rarely got examined. The Decanter result did not change the geography. The terraces and the stony clay and the southerly air were the same after the judges' deliberations as before. But the score landed in a region that had been waiting a long time for someone outside New Zealand to say what growers on Te Muna Road had believed since 1998.

The Score from Te Muna

The results from the 2024 Decanter World Wine Awards arrived after twenty-six years of farming on the Te Muna terraces. More than 16,000 wines had been submitted from producers around the world. Around fifty received Best in Show, the competition's highest designation. Craggy Range's Te Muna Pinot Noir was one of them, scored at 97 points, and it was the only New Zealand wine in that group. Martinborough had spent most of the past two decades treated as a footnote to Central Otago in international Pinot Noir conversations, a regional assumption so settled that it rarely got examined. The Decanter result did not change the geography. The terraces and the stony clay and the southerly air were the same after the judges' deliberations as before. But the score landed in a region that had been waiting a long time for someone outside New Zealand to say what growers on Te Muna Road had believed since 1998.

From the atlas

Craggy Range

At A Glance

CountryNew Zealand
RegionWairarapa / Hawke's Bay
Village / Sub-ZoneMartinborough (Te Muna Road); Gimblett Gravels
Key GrapesPinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Bordeaux red varieties
Signature BottleTe Muna Road Vineyard Pinot Noir
Founded1998

The Producer

Craggy Range farms on two different arguments about what New Zealand can do. At Te Muna Road in Martinborough, the estate grows Pinot Noir on terraced stony clay at the cool southern end of the North Island. In Hawke's Bay, ninety minutes north, it runs a separate operation on the Gimblett Gravels, a stony alluvial fan that produces a very different kind of wine: a Bordeaux-style red built for weight and length. One producer, two distinct climates, two distinctly different bottles.

Terry and Mary Peabody founded the estate in 1998. Terry Peabody then structured ownership under a 1,000-year family trust, a legal arrangement that prevents any future sale. The decision was not symbolic. It was a commitment to farming on a timescale that a normal commercial exit would make impossible.

In 2024, the 2024 Te Muna Pinot Noir was awarded Best in Show at the Decanter World Wine Awards, selected from more than 16,000 entries. It was the only New Zealand wine to receive that designation at the competition.

Place

Martinborough is a township at the southern tip of the North Island, inside the broader Wairarapa wine region. Wairarapa carries New Zealand's Geographical Indication status for the area; Martinborough is the sub-zone that concentrates most of the fine wine production. Te Muna Road is a specific sub-valley within Martinborough, set back from the main terraces and slightly more sheltered, with cool southerly airflow that slows ripening and preserves acidity.

The Gimblett Gravels zone sits in Hawke's Bay on the North Island's east coast. The sub-zone takes its name from a former riverbed: a stony alluvial fan of free-draining gravel that stresses vines into low yields and warm, concentrated fruit. Temperatures in the Gimblett Gravels run hotter than Martinborough, and the wines read differently in the glass: dark fruit, firm tannin, and more obvious extraction.

The two addresses explain the range. Te Muna Road is where the Pinot Noir is; Gimblett Gravels is where the Bordeaux red blend comes from. No single terroir could produce both.

Soil And Site

At Te Muna Road, the 81.5-acre vineyard sits across two distinct terraces of stony clay soils. Stones dominate the surface layer, reducing water retention and directing vine roots downward. The clay fraction beneath holds enough moisture through the growing season to avoid severe stress while still limiting vine vigour. The combination produces small-berried Pinot Noir with concentrated flavour and firm tannin from limited canopy and slow ripening.

Eight Pinot Noir clones are planted across more than 40 individual parcels. Clone diversity across so many parcels gives the winemaking team a spectrum of ripening dates, aromatic profiles, and tannin textures to draw from when assembling the final blend.

The Gimblett Gravels soils are a different proposition entirely: deep free-draining gravel over river silts, warm in temperature, low in fertility. Vines on this soil ripen later and produce dense, dark-fruited grapes that carry more extraction potential.

Story

Craggy Range began farming in 1998. Terry Peabody's founding decision to place the estate inside a 1,000-year trust shaped everything that followed. Long-range farming decisions, the kind that take decades to validate, became possible in a way they are not at properties that face a potential sale every business cycle.

The Te Muna Road vineyard was planted to Pinot Noir as a direct argument against the prevailing assumption that Central Otago, on the South Island, was New Zealand's only address for serious Pinot Noir. Martinborough had grown Pinot Noir before, but Central Otago had captured the export narrative and most of the critical attention. Te Muna Road was a counter-position, one taken with uncommon seriousness: 81.5 acres, eight clones, 40-plus parcels, and planting decisions made for a fifty-year horizon.

In 2018, Craggy Range purchased a 132-hectare property neighbouring the existing Te Muna vineyard. Described by the estate as their largest investment in fifteen years, the expansion committed additional capital to Martinborough at a moment when most fine wine investment in New Zealand was flowing toward Central Otago. New vines were propagated using massal selection cuttings from the best-performing blocks at Te Muna, preserving genetic material developed over twenty years of observation.

Vineyards And Cellar

At Te Muna Road, grapes are hand harvested and destemmed before fermentation in open-top oak tanks. Open-top vessels allow cap management by hand, which extracts tannin and colour while controlling temperature more precisely than closed tanks. After fermentation, the wine matures on its lees in oak barriques before bottling. Lees contact adds texture and roundness to what is otherwise a firm, structured wine.

The massal selection approach to new planting means the estate takes cuttings from parcels that have already demonstrated which clone performs best on specific soil types and aspects at Te Muna. Genetic variation within massal-selected vines produces more aromatic and structural complexity than planting a single commercial clone uniformly across the vineyard.

Te Muna Sauvignon Blanc departs from the formula used by most New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc producers. Part of the wine is fermented in foudres and smaller oak barrels rather than stainless steel. Oak fermentation adds breadth and mid-palate weight, softening the aromatic sharpness that stainless steel typically amplifies in this grape.

Wines

Te Muna Road Vineyard Pinot Noir is the estate's central bottle. Built from eight clones across 40-plus parcels, the wine carries black fruit, floral notes, and spice on the nose. In the mouth, it is silky in weight with layered fine tannins and a long finish that gradually reveals red berry and violets. The multi-parcel sourcing gives the wine complexity that single-block Pinot Noir usually cannot achieve at the same volume.

Te Muna Sauvignon Blanc occupies a different position in the range. White stone fruit, passionfruit pulp, and kaffir lime characterise the aromatics, but the texture is broader and less angular than most New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. The foudre and small-barrel fermentation adds weight without masking the grape's natural aromatic character. Acidity is present and clean, but does not dominate.

Te Kahu Gimblett Gravels is the Hawke's Bay red, a blend built on the stony alluvial fan soils of the Gimblett Gravels sub-zone. Blackberry, cinnamon, and mineral notes drive the aromatics; cedar and tobacco develop behind the fruit. Fine tannin layers provide a firm framework for the wine's long, concentrated finish. It is a denser, more extracted wine than either Te Muna bottle and works as a counterpoint to the Te Muna Pinot Noir in the range.

In The Glass

Te Muna Road Pinot Noir opens with black fruit, a floral lift, and baking spice. The mid-palate is silky, built from lees-aged texture and fine tannins drawn from open-top fermentation. Density is present but does not crowd out detail. As the wine sits in the glass, the dark fruit recedes and red berry comes forward alongside violets. The finish is long and gradual.

Te Muna Sauvignon Blanc is aromatic and ripe rather than sharp: stone fruit and passionfruit lead, with kaffir lime adding a citrus edge. The foudre fermentation gives the mid-palate more breadth than the varietal norm, and the wine sits with more weight than stainless-fermented Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. Acidity is clean and keeps the fruit in balance.

Te Kahu Gimblett Gravels is the most extracted of the three. Blackberry and briar on the nose, with cedar and tobacco behind, build toward a palate of compact dark fruit and layers of firm tannin. The finish is long and mineral.

A Bottle To Understand It

Start with Te Muna Road Vineyard Pinot Noir. It is a hand-harvested Pinot Noir from 81.5 acres of stony clay terraces in Martinborough, destemmed and fermented in open-top oak, then aged on lees in barriques. The wine is silky in weight, with layered fine tannins, a dense mid-palate, and a finish that opens from dark fruit to red berry and violets as it breathes. The 40-plus parcel sourcing and eight-clone composition give it a complexity and length that goes well beyond what the Martinborough address was expected to produce when this vineyard was planted. This is the bottle that shows what the Te Muna terraces are capable of, and why Craggy Range has spent twenty-five years building on them.

Anecdote

The results from the 2024 Decanter World Wine Awards arrived after twenty-six years of farming on the Te Muna terraces. More than 16,000 wines had been submitted from producers around the world. Around fifty received Best in Show, the competition's highest designation. Craggy Range's Te Muna Pinot Noir was one of them, scored at 97 points, and it was the only New Zealand wine in that group. Martinborough had spent most of the past two decades treated as a footnote to Central Otago in international Pinot Noir conversations, a regional assumption so settled that it rarely got examined. The Decanter result did not change the geography. The terraces and the stony clay and the southerly air were the same after the judges' deliberations as before. But the score landed in a region that had been waiting a long time for someone outside New Zealand to say what growers in Te Muna Road had believed since 1998.

Final Word

Craggy Range is a two-region estate that has spent twenty-five years making a case for Martinborough Pinot Noir with its own hands. The Te Muna Road vineyard, with its terraced stony clay, its eight clones, and its 40-plus parcels, is the heart of that work. The 2024 Decanter Best in Show result confirmed what the estate had been farming toward. The 1,000-year trust means the next generation of that farming is already decided.

Sources

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