Folium Wines – Marlborough New Zealand

Folium – latin for leaf.

Folium Vineyard is a 6ha vineyard located in the Brancott Valley in the Marlborough Region on New Zealand’s South Island. Certified Organic and dry grown vines are producing some tremendous fruit with intense flavours.

Takaki Okada is the proud Custodian, Viticulturist and winemaker at Folium Vineyard.He arrived from Tokyo in 2003 and began as winemaker at Clos Henri vineyard where he worked for 6 years before starting Folium. Attention to detail in the vineyard is where all great wines start. Careful pruning in the winter, canopy management, shoot and bunch thinning, leaf plucking during the summer and of course a helping hand from mother nature pave the way for pristine fruit at harvest.

Then fruit is all hand picked and hand sorted. Clones are mostly Dijon .The pinot noir is 100% de-stemmed fruit. When Takaki first acquired this site back in 2010 the first thing he did was turn off the irrigation! He was convinced that dry grown vineyards would enable the vines to spread their roots into the deep sub soil allowing for exceptional vine health that would produce fruit with more character and structure.

The climate in Marlborough is perfectly suited to growing premium Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir.

Warm days and cool nights during the growing season helps the fruit retain higher natural acidity while accumulating aromatics and flavour components.

The soil was created by the ancient glacial action and river systems. Low vigour clay based soil in Brancott Valley can retain sufficient moisture during the dry summer to balance the growth of the vines.

“We use time honoured wine making techniques to produce quality wines that express the unique nature of Folium Vineyard”. – Takaki Okada