Small but beautiful where history began

I feel like I'm a contestant on The Amazing Race," I yelled down the phone to Glenda Neil, the Northland-based wine consultant who'd put together my three-day itinerary.
"It's like, 'Drive an hour south here, taste wine, then drive an hour and a half north, taste wine, drive 50 minutes east, taste more wine'. And that's just in one day. Just as well I'm spitting."
"You'll be fine," she assured me. "Relax, enjoy the scenery and I'll see you at lunch tomorrow."
I guess because there are only a handful of wineries in the area - most still in their infancy as far as wine production is concerned - it's easy to think of Northland as perhaps New Zealand's youngest wine region.
Yet the Far North can lay claim to being this nation's oldest wine region because the first vines in New Zealand were planted in the Bay of Islands by the missionary Samuel Marsden way back in 1819.
In 1832, James Busby - New Zealand's first public servant and instigator of the Treaty of Waitangi - planted a vineyard at Waitangi and made his own wines.
There was serious history and pedigree up here, and once I figured out that I had to put my foot on the brake pedal in order to start my snazzy, red rental car, I hightailed it south from Whangarei airport to the sandy isles of Mangawhai and Lochiel Estate to see former industrial chemist Gary Cameron and his wife, Liz, a former Red Cross nurse.
Named after the spiritual home of the Cameron clan, Lochiel is starting to make a name for itself with gold-medal-winning chardonnay and bright buxom Bordeaux-style reds.
Lochiel's rose is deliciously cherry-like and the dessert malbec, The Laird, has to be tasted to be believed.
"We're gunning to produce Northland's top chardonnay," says Gary, although I reckon Marsden Estate's Black Rocks Chardonnay will take some beating.
But I can tell that Gary is serious. "The 2010 is in barrel at the moment. The fruit was incredibly ripe and we're really excited about it."
Scented with rose, tamarillo and spices, and oozing cocoa-like warmth in the mouth, Lochiel's merlot makes an instant impression.
Yet the merlot has been a bit tricky to ripen.
"Honestly, it's taken me three years to get my head around what I've needed to do to get the vines right," says Liz, who is the muscle in the vineyard, "and now we drop about 80 per cent of the fruit so that what remains is up to Rob's standard."
Rob, their son, is Lochiel's winemaker.
Gaining fame for his own innovative wine brand, Invivo, which he founded with school chum Tim Lightbourne, Rob returned to New Zealand in 2008 having spent the previous six years working on vintages in nine European countries. Whenever time allows he zooms up from his home in Auckland to make wine for his parents and their neighbours, one of whom is Auckland swim school owner Ross Millar, who set up the tiny 2ha Millar's Vineyard next door to Gary and Liz in 2005.
Comprising pinot gris, gewurztraminer, viognier and syrah, their size dictates their total production, which is a minuscule 400 cases (which equates to about seven pallets of wine).
Although Millar's has a groovy little cellar door area complete with a quaint band rotunda, Ross decides to pop over to Lochiel about noon to show me a couple of his wines.
I sneakily suspect it's because Liz has put together a rather decadent lunch and he has his eye on the terrine.
On the other hand, I'm completely wowed by his viognier which has beautiful apricot, jasmine and peach notes and exceptional length of flavour.
His rose and syrah are clean, vibrant and dangerously drinkable.
With his chiselled jaw and enormous swimmer's shoulders, Ross looks more like a nightclub bouncer than a vigneron, but his eyes light up like those of a little girl when he's sipping wine.
Sitting around the table with Gary, Liz and Ross and listening to them wax lyrical about the potential of Northland's wine, their enthusiasm is infectious.
Newcomers to an old industry yet no strangers to tough times, they're in it for the long haul and they can't stop talking about the characters I'll encounter on my journey north.
Excellent, bring it on.
www.millarsvineyard.co.nz
www.lochielestate.co.nz