The fruits of labour

Behind an unassuming garage door on Holland Street, the smell of crushed apple, ripe feijoa and fresh citrus fills the air. Glass bottles topped with liquid gold sit in open crates and vats bubble away. Stacked fruit boxes sit in a corner, and two friends haul a keg across the concrete floor. Jesse Phillips and Cosmo Hawke are the owners and founders of Fruit Cru, a Wellington fruit winery offering up something different from your standard drop.

“We love ugly fruit,” says Jesse. “All the fruit we use are seconds.” That’s the orchard rejects: misshaped, spotted or discoloured fruit that doesn’t meet export quality. Like many great Kiwi ventures, the friends started out in a garage in Newtown. In the early days, a lot of the fruit they used was locally foraged. As things began to scale up, they remained determined to use Wellington-grown fruit. They reached out to organic growers in Te Horo and along the Kāpiti Coast.

The duo now have established relationships with a few orchards, but their entrepreneurial spirit remains. “We still forage some of the fruit we use. We’ve got a few crab apple trees we visit.”
Defining what it is exactly that Fruit Cru makes can be a tricky affair. The French term Pétillant Naturel is used for some of their wines. It categorises sparkling wines made in a manner that predates the ‘traditional method’ used in champagne. ‘Fruit wine’ is a broader term that encompasses all the varied and wonderful flavours.

Fruit Cru does co-ferments, meaning they’ll throw together fruit combinations like mad scientists until they find the perfect blend. Granny Smith apples, Doyenne du Comice pears, and juicy blackcurrants. Beurre Bosc and Japanese flowering quince. “Our wine is alive,” says Jesse, holding a bottle up to the light. “It’s still developing in there. It just gets better with age.“  While the concoctions vary, there are common adjectives that unite the blends: organic, wild yeast, unfiltered, unfined, and well-balanced.

Fruit Cru’s innovation and ingenuity have been quick to pique the interest of Wellington’s hospitality scene. At The Ram, an upmarket bar and pub on Cuba Street, the team decided to serve Fruit Cru from opening. Having local wine on tap and supporting neighbouring businesses helped them create the sense of community they were after. Like-minded bars and restaurants all over the city have followed suit.

“We do small keg runs,” explains Jesse. “At The Ram, you might have a boysenberry wine, then up the road at [natural wine bar] Ascot, something completely different.” Staying artisan means the product reflects Jesse’s and Cosmo’s values and remains true to the brand they’ve created. The usual suspects make up an impressive list of bottle stockiest, including Regional Wines, Commonsense Organics and Moore Wilson’s, all champions of local producers.

Once a month, Fruit Cru brings this Wellington community together with cellar door events. They’re hosted behind the roller door at their manufacturing premises on Holland Street. The working floor is covered over with tables and chairs. DJ decks are dusted off and a local restaurant comes in to cater. Being in the cellar, smelling the fermenting fruit, and touching the vats, you get a sense of the work that goes into each bottle. The wine is a labour of love, or as Jesse and Cosmo put it, a unique expression of the place they call home.