Nothing dull in dolls' vineyard

Heading north from Mangawhai Heads and just 3km before you reach Whangarei on State Highway 1 is Longview Estate, Northland's oldest established vineyard and famous not only for its wines but also for the life-size inflatable dolls dressed in bikinis that are occasionally used as bird-scarers.
Longview was created by Mate and Milly Vuletich, who pioneered winegrowing in Whangarei in 1969, and today the cellar door looks out across the gorgeous Whangarei Harbour.
Mate and Milly's son, Mario, now heads the estate. He is both charming and a chatterbox, so when you visit to taste his wines make sure you come armed with some questions or, at least, a solid escape plan. Mario is a veritable fount of information about the history of the region, his vineyard, and his plans for the future, so be prepared to take a walk through the vineyard and an educational excursion through Longview's no-frills, but totally functional, winery.
Mario's son, Richard, is a trained winemaker who skips across the Tasman to lend his skills to the likes of Moss Wood in Margaret River before zooming home to work vintage for his dad.
While juicy, tropical chardonnay's aromatic whites and Bordeaux-style reds are the wines that appear to pick up the medals, it's an intriguingly odd and totally unorthodox wine called White Diamond that keeps the crowds coming back to Longview year after year.
"We just can't make enough of it," Mario says. "People make a sort of pilgrimage to buy it from us each year and we sell-out on release - the next version won't be available until June."
Fortunately, there's a bottle available for me to try. "Mario, it smells like grape juice," I say.
"I know," he says.
"And it tastes just like fresh grape juice and bubblegum, with a hint of alcohol in it," I say.
"Yep," he agrees.
"This is the most un-wine-like wine I've ever tasted," I say, quite baffled.
"Well, it's a household name up here," says Mario. "We've had it coming off the bottling line and going straight out the door. I think there'd be rioting in the streets if we stopped making it."
White Diamond is a North American grape propagated in the 1800s and was planted in the 1960s when Mario's parents first set up the vineyard. It was so popular then that it was sold in flagons, although now it comes in 750ml bottles. Richard is keen to work on a sparkling version in the near future. "What's beautiful about it," he says, "is that when it's ripening on the vine the scent of the fruit blows through the vineyard and into the back door of the house. I love it."
Another Northland signature is that almost every vineyard produces a port, and Longview's Gumdigger's tawny is definitely one to wrap your tastebuds around.
As for those inflatable bird-scarers, Mario's daughter, Marie, who is Richard's twin, says: "I really hope Dad doesn't bring them out this year. "When we were kids he'd make Richard and I bring them inside each night and it's so embarrassing being seen carrying these big fat dolls through the vineyard."