Debra Cruickshank has had a chaotic few weeks. It's harvest time – a month early – and grapes have been arriving at her Central Otago micro-winery in buckets, bins and baby baths.
Debra is a boutique winemaker, who this year will make 35 different wines for growers with just small plantings of vines.
"Most of it's not commercial. A lot of it is for their own consumption."
Some growers have just half a hectare in vines, she says.
"Just enough to have one barrel of wine, enough for their family to drink for the year; family and friends, depending....", she says with a smile.
A barrel yields 300 bottles.
Debra had no intention of becoming a winemaker. She was heading to art school but thought she would stop in Cromwell for a year first. Twenty years later she is still there.
She trained in vineyards, in wineries, went on to gain a degree and worked in a wine lab.
She knew there was huge demand from growers who wanted to sip on and share their own wines but produce too few grapes for the bigger wineries to take them on.
Debra also has her small vineyard and wine label and makes port. Six years ago she made 180 bottles of port; this year it will be 5,000.
Last November Debra won the supreme award in Rural Women New Zealand's Enterprising Rural Woman of the Year Awards.
