65 million years in the making...
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Here at Fancrest we are truly passionate about our soil. It is the most important element in our terroir. It's what makes our site truly exceptional.
This is a photograph of the now abandoned Omihi Limeworks on our neighbors farm. For many years, it produced some of the purest agricultural lime quarried in the South Island.
Between Fancrest Estate, and the ocean (Pegasus Bay), is the very prominent limestone escarpment of the Cass Range of hills and mountains (sometimes called the Limestone or Coastal Range. In places along the range), In places you can see where the limestones and the underlying sands and sandstones which rest on the Trias-Jura beds are exposed. What you can't see from Fancrest is a deep fault which runs the length of the spine of the range, splitting it into two parallel sections. These massive folds are due to immense geological pressures over millennia which has resulted in significant unconformaties along the range.
These unconformaties explain why a vineyard 100m from another will have a completely different soil profile.
These two parallel sections of the range are strikingly different, suggesting that, while being pushed up out of the ocean the entire sea-bed tilted significantly. One part of the range was clearly once near a shore-line while the other has characteristics of deeper water.
Anyone who has driven to Hanmer Springs or the West Coast will have seen the beautiful limestone formations at Weka Pass (aptly named "Frog Rock"). "Frog Rock" is an example of hard Weka Limestone. At Fancrest Estate we see more Amuri Lime. When these two layers of limestone were laid down on the ocean floor, the Weka series lay on top of the Amuri series. The relationship between the Amuri limestone and the Weka Pass stone can be clearly seen over a considerable length of the range.
Amuri limstone is an argillaceous limestone. The presence of a well-defined system of cross-joints causes it to break up freely into quadrangular blocks. Amuri Limestone is at times chalky in texture, but is usually hard and occasionally crystalline, especially where it has been subjected to pressures resulting from earth-movements. The microscope shows the presence of numerous grains of glauconite, even in the white-coloured rock, but distinct layers and lenticules of greensand occur at times, as can be seen in localities like Weka Pass, though it occurs more freely farther north. The lower portions of this limestone are decidedly more argillaceous, and merge into a true marl. Amuri limestone has been described as equivalent to an ooze. Its chemical composition shows that it contains over 80 per cent. of CaCO. It is likely to have formed at a depth of 1,000 fathoms.
In the area of Fancrest Estate, the Amuri limestone is somewhat atypical. It is about 45-60m thick, well stratified and jointed into flaky quadrangular blocks, divided by narrow layers of more or less marly material in the lower part, and by more pronounced seams of glauconitic material in the higher parts till it passes into the Weka Pass Stone (cap rock), with occasional worm-borings on the top of the hard limestone layers. The nodular layer is not as well defined as usual, but passes gradually into the beds above and below it. In some places it is difficult to tell the precise line of demarcation of the two.
Evidence of Weka Pass stone can be seen exposed along the spine of the ridge above Fancrest Estate. Weka Stone is a glauconitic arenaceous limestone as it occurs in the typical locality at Weka Pass, but probably equivalent to the higher parts of the Amuri limestone elsewhere. In its lower portion the rock presents the facies of a calcareous greensand of very fine grain, with a comparatively low percentage of calcium carbonate, but this percentage increases in the higher levels. Specks of glauconite are distributed throughout the rock. It breaks at times into quadrangular blocks, but rarely with the tily arrangement which characterizes Amuri limestone. Under the microscope it appears to be composed largely of Foraminifera, notably Globigerina, with a considerable amount of quartz and occasional shreds of biotite. The glauconite exists as grains, sometimes as a stain on the quartz, and occasionally filling the cavities of Foraminifera. As compared with Amuri limestone it is coarser in texture, more glauconitic and arenaceous; but the Foraminifera appear to be the same, and, as in the former case, have their cavities filled with calcareous material. The depth at which deposition took place would in all probability be slightly shallower than that at which the Amuri limestone was laid down.
Overlying the Weka Stone can sometimes be seen a Grey marl. In its lower portions a glauconitic, arenaceous marl, which in its higher parts in some localities becomes distinctly argillaceous and takes on a true marly facies, and at times becomes decidedly sandy as it passes up into the next higher member of the series.
Evidence of this argillaceous sandstone can be found in the Estate's north-west vineyards.
These subtle soil changes across the Estate have been well mapped. Each vineyard block contains almost homogenous soil types. Each vineyard has the potential to express it's Pinot Noir completely differently.
It is these differences that add complexity.
Pinot Noir tends to be light in your mouth. Its light juiciness harmonizes well with darker meats, which tend to be leaner meats or cuts. This includes game meats, like venison, which tend to have less fatty marbled richness than a typical beef cut, and the distinctively tender but lean beef fillet. Heavy food can overwhelm Pinot's lean body.
Cool-climate 