Fat Pig Vineyard

It would be no surprise to see a putting green on the front lawn of the Fat Pig Vineyard in Waipapa, even a home-made one with Edmonds baking tins sunk into the turf and bamboo branches used as flag carriers.

Bruce Soland, the owner of this vineyard, was once a professional golfer. He whacked little white balls around the planet for 20 years, is how he describes it, until he awoke one morning and realised two things-hewasn't

getting any younger (he was 40) and there was more to life than this peripatetic sporting lark. When a job as the club professional at Kerikeri cropped up quicker than a sliced shot sailing towards the trees, he thought of fishing, diving and a distinct lack of traffic lights.

Five years later and with ennui threatening to send him crawling up the walls he hatched another one of his cunning plans with the help of local wine guru, Rod McIvor, and found a 'wonderful north-facing block on friable clay' close to town and perfect for growing grapes.

''At the time we had a fat pig called Jenny Craig which was our first-choice name for the vineyard but due to a few potential legal problems we settled for Fat Pig Vineyard and it was a lot more polite than some of the other names I came up with,'' he says.

Since then Bruce and his wife, Sue, have had 23 Jenny Craigs. The last looked remarkably like Babe from the eponymous 1995 Australian film but earlier this year she took an enforced vacation, just to hang around you understand. It's said quietly in case the little ears of the latest Jenny Craig are listening.

Indeed, the Solands may have started something of a trend when it comes to christening things. Consider their sparkling pinot gris. That's called Giggly Piggly. And apart from Jenny Craig there's one cat called Stiffy who doesn't move much, another called Miss Manky for fairly obvious reasons, the three chickens Chook, Chook and Chook, Moey the champagne lab and Molly the black lab, who might suffer from name envy given the fairly pedestrian nature of her own moniker in this farm yard collective. She could at least have been called Bolly.

Furthermore, when friends from Auckland bought a property across the road from the Fat Pig in Puketotara Road it had two pigs so naturally the vineyard became 'Morepork'. Then there's the maybe self-styled Mad Dogs Vineyard up the road and across the way there's the Bent Duck and there's a story here too. Yes there are ducks, yes there's a bend in the stream and yes the two guys who own it are, um, well, gaily carrying on their business.

Bruce and Sue grow all their own grapes-table grapes, chardonnay, syrah, pinot gris and the sauvignon blanc they were told would never grow here and their first vintage of which picked up a medal at the New Zealand International Wine show. Annual production is now between 10,000 and 12,000 bottles sold mainly through the cellar door and in local restaurants, hotels and the Bay of Islands Farmers markets in Kerikeri and Paihia.

Since 2005 they've collected ten medals in major wine competitions and they'll release a new wine towards the end of this year. It's a nudge, nudge, wink, wink situation at this stage because they're keeping it under wraps from the competition. Puketotara Porky Pink Pinot perhaps?

Highlight of the Fat Pig year is the wine and food festival held in the second week of December and appropriately called ''Little Vineyards of Kerikeri'' where ten local vintners exhibit their new releases . . . amidst . . .dogs and ducks and fat pigs in muck, and Bruce's word play tee-shirts-with luck.