Rippon Vineyard & Winery

At A Glance

**Place:** Western shore of Lake Wānaka, Central Otago, looking towards the Southern Alps.
**Family:** The Mills family has farmed the land since 1912; winegrowing began in 1982.
**Grape to know:** Pinot Noir, from young-vine and estate wines through named mature-vine parcels.
**Farming:** Organic from the estate’s beginning and biodynamic since 2002.
**Bottle to seek:** 2022 Tinker’s Field Mature Vine Pinot Noir, from Rippon’s oldest vines.

The Producer

Rippon Vineyard & Winery is a Mills family property on Lake Wānaka’s western shore, where four generations have farmed since 1912. The family’s work as winegrowers began in 1982, and Pinot Noir now carries the clearest thread from that land into bottle: a grape shown through estate, village, named-block and mature-vine wines rather than one generic Central Otago red.

Place

Rippon’s Pinot Noir grows beside Lake Wānaka, with the Southern Alps in view across the water. Wānaka sits within Central Otago, New Zealand’s continental wine region; its mountain setting brings strong light and long sunshine hours, while the lake softens the local growing conditions. For Pinot Noir, that combination points towards ripeness without abandoning acidity, so the wines can hold fruit, tannin and freshness together.

Soil And Site

The ground under Tinker’s Field is an ancient ejection cone of coarse schist gravels on a gentle north-facing slope. Schist gravel drains freely, and the north-facing aspect gives the Pinot Noir direct light; the result is a parcel selected for a more concentrated, firmer-framed expression than a broad estate blend.

Lake Wānaka also acts as a large thermal mass, while Ruby Island offers protection that further moderates Rippon’s microclimate. The lake’s influence matters at harvest: Pinot Noir can ripen through a long season while retaining the acidity needed to carry savoury fruit and tannin through the finish.

Story

Rolfe Mills and his wife Lois returned to the family farm in Wānaka in 1973. Rather than move straight to a single commercial grape, Rolfe planted trial rows of 30 varieties in 1975; the first Rippon vineyard block followed in 1982. That sequence left Pinot Noir as a considered planting on a long-farmed property, not a crop added to an already finished estate.

The commercial vineyard begun in 1982 is described as 15 hectares. Rippon has farmed organically from its start as a wine estate and biodynamically since 2002, following Nick Mills’s return from Burgundy. Those choices put attention on vineyard material first, which suits a Pinot Noir range built around vine age and named sites.

Vineyards And Cellar

Rippon’s biodynamic work includes estate composting, a practical way of returning organic material to the vineyard. In Pinot Noir, vineyard care matters because the grape’s thin skins supply both fragrance and tannin; sound, evenly ripened fruit lets the cellar keep the wine dry and structured without relying on heavy extraction.

For the 2022 Tinker’s Field, fruit was fermented with resident yeasts, each parcel was fermented and matured separately before blending, and the wine was bottled without fining or filtration. It spent 28 days on skins, then 18 months in French oak, beginning with 21% new barrels before a second winter in neutral wood. The approach leaves room for red fruit, spice and earthy detail while building tannin and length rather than overt oak sweetness.

Wines

The Pinot Noir range moves through young-vine, estate, village and Emma’s Block bottlings to Tinker’s Field Mature Vine Pinot Noir. The names are useful signals: some wines gather fruit from a wider part of the property, while Emma’s Block and Tinker’s Field narrow the focus to a named place. Across that structure, Pinot Noir can shift from supple red-fruit drinking to firmer tannin, darker savoury notes and more weight.

Tinker’s Field occupies the mature-vine end of the range. Its vines were planted between 1982 and 1989, and its coarse-schist slope supplies the physical setting for a dry Pinot Noir with more compression and grip. Emma’s Block offers another mature-vine parcel perspective; the estate and young-vine wines show the grape before that site-specific concentration becomes the main point.

In The Glass

The 2022 Tinker’s Field opens with wild raspberry, blueberry, violet, lavender and spice. On the palate it is medium-bodied, with damson plum, forest floor, bark and graphite; those darker, savoury notes sit alongside a dry line of acidity rather than turning the wine sweet or heavy.

Silky tannins build through the middle and persist into a long finish, where mineral and savoury notes remain after the fruit. The wine’s 28 days of skin contact and long élevage help explain its shape: Pinot Noir fruit is present, but the lasting impression is of texture, graphite-like grip and settled oak rather than a soft, immediate red.

A Bottle To Understand It

Choose the 2022 Rippon Tinker’s Field Mature Vine Pinot Noir. It comes from vines planted between 1982 and 1989 on a gentle north-facing slope of coarse schist gravel, linking one bottle directly to Rippon’s earliest vineyard years. Expect a dry, medium-bodied Pinot Noir with wild berries, violet, spice, damson plum, forest-floor savour and long, silky tannin. Its 18 months in French oak give the wine breadth, while the acidity and mineral grip keep the finish firm.

Anecdote

In 1992, Rippon Pinot Noir became the first Pinot Noir to win New Zealand’s national trophy for Best Red Wine. The wine came from the Mills family’s Wānaka property, where the family had farmed since 1912 and where the first Rippon vineyard block had been planted in 1982. Rolfe Mills and Lois had returned to the farm in 1973, and Rolfe had planted trial rows of 30 grape varieties in 1975 before the vineyard took shape. By the time of the 1992 trophy, Rippon Pinot Noir had moved from those experimental rows to a national result for a wine from Wānaka.

Final Word

Rippon is easiest to understand through Pinot Noir and through Wānaka: lake-moderated mountain conditions, schist ground, long-farmed land and bottles that separate estate fruit from named mature-vine parcels. Tinker’s Field puts those elements in one dry, savoury, structured glass.

At A Glance

The Producer

Place

Soil And Site

Story

Vineyards And Cellar

Wines

In The Glass

A Bottle To Understand It

Anecdote

Final Word

Sources

Where to go next