From left: Cosmo Hawke and Jesse Phillips ferment natural fruit wine out of their Wellington CBD warehouse. Photo / Ethan Manera.
From left: Cosmo Hawke and Jesse Phillips ferment natural fruit wine out of their Wellington CBD warehouse. Photo / Ethan Manera.
What started as a hobby in a storage unit for two Wellington dads has turned into a first-of-its-kind certified organic winery, with the pioneering fruit fermentations now making it to retail shelves.
Fruit Cru was started in 2021 by friends Jesse Phillips, a chef and DJ, and Cosmo Hawke, alocal bar-owner, with a shared interest in organic produce and winemaking.
“I didn’t see it as a business at the start,” Hawke said, with the pair first purchasing a small tank and experimenting by fermenting locally foraged fruit.
“We were in a storage unit and you’re not allowed to sell alcohol out of a storage unit,” he said.
They continued playing with different fruit blends, hosting parties for their friends to try their different concoctions.
What was born was a unique product, which the pair describe as something between cider and pétillant naturel or pet-nat wine, fermented naturally from locally sourced apples, quinces, feijoas, and anything they can get their hands on.
“We don’t add any yeasts - we’re literally just juicing fruit and fermenting and blending which is kind of the unique thing, I don’t think anyone else is really doing that with this type of fruit,” Hawke said.
“I think we’re the only certified organic cider in New Zealand,” Phillips said.
As interest grew they managed to get Fruit Cru stocked in a couple of local bars, and from there the business has continued to expand.
Fruit Cru's fruit wine is said to be the first of its kind in New Zealand. Photo / Ethan Manera
All the fruit used is seconds, making use of the “ugly” fruit from local orchards that doesn’t make it to export, as well as fruit Hawke and Phillips forage.
The wine is now fermented in Fruit Cru’s warehouse, behind an unassuming roller door in the inner-city, where thousands of bottles are currently ageing.
Thousands of bottles sit ageing in Fruit Cru's central Wellington warehouse. Photo / Ethan Manera
After becoming a popular on-tap choice for local bars and restaurants, the business has “slowly been growing”, Hawke said.
The pair has recently brokered a deal with supermarket giant Foodstuffs to have Fruit Cru stocked in five supermarkets in the Wellington region.
Their main production happens during summer when they can source ripe fruit, it is juiced then fermented in large metal tanks, with the leftover pulp fed to goats at the nearby Brooklyn Creamery.
The pair has reached a point where they produce about 10,000 bottles each year.
“Our biggest challenge is getting people to try it, because when you look at it, it’s not obvious what it is, there’s no other products that are similar, it’s such a new kind of proposition,” Phillips said.
Fruit Cru owner Jesse Phillips with the large metal drums which ferment their organic fruit wine. Photo / Ethan Manera.
Fruit Cru remains a part-time gig for the two dads, but they plan to continue expansion with the ultimate goal, Hawke said, to break into the export market.
“We’ve kind of designed a product that is so New Zealand,” he said, with Phillips saying Japan would be an ideal market for the wine, and they’re on the hunt for a good distributor to partner with.
“We’ve taken the product to Australia before, for natural wine fairs and no one even knows what a feijoa is, so it’s quite a thing to put on the world stage.”
The retail expansion takes a lot of production planning, but is a step the pair wants to take to make Fruit Cru into a “proper business”.
Their products are also stocked in local Wellington grocer Moore Wilson’s, as well as wine retailers Glengarry and Regional Wines.
“People have been super supportive, which is awesome,” Phillips said.
Ethan Manera is a New Zealand Herald journalist based in Wellington. He joined NZME in 2023 as a broadcast journalist with Newstalk ZB and is interested in local issues, politics, and property in the capital. He can be emailed at ethan.manera@nzme.co.nz.
