Johanneshof Cellars is a small artisan boutique winery producing wines from hand harvested grapes only sourced from their vineyards and growers in Marlborough on New Zealand’s South Island.
It is jointly owned and operated by Edel Everling a fifth generation winemaker from Ruedesheim, Rheingau, Germany and Warwick Foley from Marlborough. Both winemakers trained in the world-famous wine area of Rheingau in Germany, where Edel studied for her degree in viticulture and oenology at Geisenheim University while Warwick was a guest student there. They continued to work for renowned wineries in Germany and New Zealand before setting up Johanneshof Cellars in 1991.

Warwick and Edel make all wines on site combining the traditions of the art of winemaking with modern technology. Their principals are to crop at a very low level to enhance fruit quality and flavours, harvesting the grapes prodomantly by hand and interfering as little as possible with vines and wines. The estate vineyard is close-planted in European tradition and not irrigated. The winery is build multi-levelled to utilise gravity rather than pumping wines. A modern laboratory ensures control of fermentations but is not seen as a substitute to regular organoleptic evaluations of the wines.

Johanneshof’s adoration for Europe’s century old wine culture led Edel and Warwick to establish New Zealand’s first underground rock cellar tunnelled into solid sandstone, 50 meters long and 20 meters deep underground.