About
Jane Cooper
Winemaker, forklift driver, chief schemer
Got halfway through a law degree, stepped into a winery, breathed it in and immediately switched to chemistry before studying winemaking and viticulture at Lincoln University.
Started winemaking in Nelson for Seifried Estate before moving on to manage a small cooperative winery making wines for Te Mania, Richmond Plains and Kaimira Estate with vintages in Chile, Italy and Australia in between. Moved to Wairarapa in the early 2000s and spent 14 years as general manager and chief winemaker at Matahiwi Estate. Left in 2016 and picked apples and pears, made Eau de vie and spent a lot of time thinking. Decided the next time she put everything into a business it would be her own. Designed Alexia HQ on the back of an envelope.
Runs the wine bar kitchen. Makes the hummus and preserves herself.
Chair of Judges National Wine Awards of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Wife of Lesley, mum of Vita and Tom. Lover of Doc Martens. Frequently outraged.
Lesley Reidy
Winery dogsbody/cellar rat, carrier of heavy things
Cancelled her enrolment in the Masters Religious Studies course at Trinity College in Dublin to return to New Zealand and Jane, study journalism and become a rural news hack.
Left journalism and has done a range of jobs since, but as no one finds anything as interesting as Jane being a winemaker has not yet had to explain to anyone what she actually does for work.
When not rescuing Jane from being crushed by barrels or lifting, carrying or cleaning something wine related - is usually sitting at the kitchen table (the office) earning external income to throw on the winery money bonfire.
In the gumboots full-time for vintage. Fastest picker.
Runs the wine bar front of house. Chief gardener and carpark orchardist.
Wife of Jane, mama of Vita and Tom. Lover of salt and vinegar chips. Frequently thinking WTF?
About Alexia
Alexia represents family matriarchy - women who drove us forward and held us together through the big, beautiful, fragile messiness of life.
Alexia is 100% funded, owned, operated, worked in, stressed about and obsessed over by us two, and has been from day one.
Building an urban winery
Jane was cruising around Greytown on her bike one day when she saw this place and slammed on the brakes. A little industrial site wedged between houses just behind the lawnmower shop.
Overgrown, with a massive derelict tin shed and the standard pile of random stuff that accumulates when land is forgotten – car tyres, bottles, a row of cinema seats, a rusty shopping trolley.
We listed the shed on Trade Me for $1 with the proviso: whoever buys it has to move it. The shed was dismantled piece by piece to go and live many new lives. Native timber framing for a house, the corrugated iron skin for a film set, fences and art projects, reinforcing steel for a bridge.
Now we’ve built a tiny urban winery from the ground up for Alexia to live and grow around our family. We do everything here from crushing the grapes to bottling the wine, making it a hands-on process from start to finish.
During vintage and over winter this space is transformed from a cellar door into a fully functioning winery. We do it all here. Grapes in one door, wine out the other. We are one of a tiny handful of NZ wineries that make, age and disgorge our Méthode Traditionnelle 100% by hand, in house making us a must visit if you are interested in Wairarapa wineries.
We are committed to sustainable winemaking practices - our water supply is sourced solely from rainwater collected from our winery roof, and all winery processes minimise water wastage. Each vintage all grape byproducts are returned to the vineyard and made into compost to feed the vines for the coming season. Our winery site, once a bare wasteland, is gradually being developed into an urban garden haven for birds and a range of other creepy crawlies.
Manuka Flats Vineyard
When we started our urban winery project we knew we only had money to build a winery or own a vineyard. We chose to build a winery , so we don’t own a vineyard. Instead we have a long-term grower partnership with Julie Collins and Simon Dawson of Manuka Flats Vineyard, West Taratahi on the western side of the valley between Carterton and Masterton.
Manuka Flats vineyard is low wire, densely planted, and has naturally low yields of intensely flavoured grapes, as well a small experimental block dedicated to varieties not widely grown in Wairarapa.
Jane has been making with for 30 years now, but is continuously pushing to make better wines each year - taking what we’ve learnt, thinking about how to evolve the wines we make, and working in the vineyard to achieve that. Our approach has always been to keep it simple, let the vineyard speak, and take great care.
Great wine starts in the soil, working with the land to accentuate the very best things about it to grow the best grapes we can. Once we have fantastic grapes, the job of the winemaker is simple – try not to trip up on the way into the winery.
