kia ora

Our names are Sandra and Jaco, born and raised in The Netherlands and founders of Merekara Wines. We both have a high-level hospitality background as sommeliers, where the love for wine has grown to something big. The dream was to make our own wine from the moment we met. Jaco has done many wine studies and joined vintages at Léoville Poyferré in Bordeaux, France and ‘De Toren’ in Stellenbosch, South-Africa. After many wine visits around the world, we decided to go to New Zealand in 2014. Here, we took the first steps in the almighty Brêloft vineyard and fell in love with the beauty of the Awatere Valley and the Marlborough sun.

Our dream came true in 2019 where we harvested our first Pinot Noir grapes. From 2020 we also make Sauvignon Blanc and from 2021 we started making Chenin Blanc. We only produce a few barrels per variety. So, we call ourselves extremely boutique. We love to highlight the grape variety from vintage to vintage where mother nature plays a massive role. Our philosophy is that quality is the highest priority. We focus on meticulous care in the vineyard, 100% hand-picked grapes and minimal intervention in the winery.

We chose the name Merekara Wines as Grace is a true Miracle, and as we are living the dream in Aotearoa we translated Miracle to Māori; Merekara.

The logo (which you can see in the background here) represents a bunch of grapes; The Koru represents the stem, and the clouds of Aotearoa represent the berries.