Jason Stent: Wine sub-region Bridge Pa Triangle worth celebrating

Jason Stent, winemaker at Paritua, says the seasons dictate his winemaking philosophy. Photo/Warren Buckland

Paritua winemaker Jason Stent says the Bridge Pa Triangle boasts characteristics of no other. He chats to Mark Story ahead of today's festival.

What are your expected highlights for the festival?
The highlights will be the great selection of Bridge Pa Wines from eight different producers, a mix of new vintages and aged wines, excellent food offerings and great entertainment with local and out-of-town bands. The festival celebrates the great wines coming out of the Bridge Pa Triangle Wine District, and the convenience of hop-on hop-off buses every 15 to 20 minutes allows you to visit every winery on the day in a fun relaxed atmosphere.

More than any other wine growing areas in the province, Bridge Pa Triangle seems to be really pushing its appellation?
Yes we are about promoting it as the largest sub-region in Hawke's Bay which produces some of the region's most celebrated wines from chardonnay and blended reds to syrah.

If you had to sum up the characteristics of the area, what are they?
Primarily it would have to be the aromatic qualities and elegance, the wines from the Bridge Pa Triangle tend to have great varietal expression, a purity of fruit and in the case of our red wines softer more approachable tannins. These wines also age very well.

What's your personal winemaking philosophy?
I let the season dictate what approach to take, I tend to pick on flavour with sugar and acid measurements used to guide but not dictate picking decisions. We use many techniques and technologies to enhance the quality of our wine such as selective grape harvesters, our optical grape sorter, techniques in the vineyard to control vine growth and increase the concentration of flavours. We are lucky to have a modern well-equipped winery that is easy to work in.

Tell us a bit about Paritua's new initiative to make its own port.
This year to keep things interesting we are going to try to make a port-style wine out of malbec grapes, mainly because we can get this variety very ripe and I think the blackberry, plum and chocolate flavours of malbec will lend itself to making that style of wine. It's fun to try these things when we can.