Owner and winemaker of Odyssey Wines, Rebecca Salmond, is a self-described hands-on grower who makes and sells wine with great care and understands what styles customers and restaurants enjoy and demand.
Salmond adapts wines where she can to match and meet customer needs; her style as a winemaker is an extension and shaped around the vineyard, satisfying and working cohesively with what works best for her vines to create a process that improves the product for the end-user—for example, taking leaves from Sauvignon Blanc to encourage the expression of a riper fruit profile.
Odyssey Wines fruit is grown in Marlborough in the southern valley from clay soils, which means that white varieties often have a nice minerality mixed with tropical flavours, and the Pinot Noir tends to have dense colour, firm phenolic, with hints of forest fruits and plum characteristics. The placement of the vineyard on a hill also minimises the risk of frost, and each of the wines created by Salmond is from the single vineyard, reflecting the faithful southern valley terroir of Marlborough.
When out in the vineyard, Salmond is often with her dog, Andi, doing whatever work needs to be done, whether it's pruning, leaf plucking, picking or more. However, based in Auckland, Salmond will see customers, stir barrels, and prepare wines for bottling.
Rebecca Salmond
Bottling often occurs when barrels are needed for the next harvest. Style-wise, however, Pinot Noir Rosé is a fresh and fruity wine that can be bottled earlier than a barrel-aged Iliad Pinot Noir.
Salmond opts for a hands-off approach with intervening and additives to wines, choosing a more traditional approach. However, technological advancements have made lab analysis of wines more fine-tuned and efficient, which Salmond appreciates.
Salmond said that this year's extreme weather had impacted her grower's vineyards in Gisborne, creating a challenge for labour for picking the grapes, as many pickers come from Te Karaka, an area devastated by the floods. However, after this year, 2017 was another challenging year. At the Odyssey Wines vineyard in Marlborough, the weather had not impacted vines, and the harvest from 2022 was good, with the crop and fruit of the season being clean, flavourful, and decently sized.
Salmond was curious to see what spring would be for 2023, as the last few had been increasingly wetter; however, with El Niño in play, this spring appears to be promised as a dry one.
Salmond is a travelled winemaker; after studying biotechnology at Massey University for four years, she went on to Adelaide to complete post-graduate studies in winemaking before travelling to be a winemaker in Alto Adige Sicily and then also Bordeaux, Burgundy, Cote Rotie, Chile and New Zealand.
“Winemaking overseas has greatly affected my winemaking style. Hallmarks to me of fine wine became elegance and subtlety and texture and food compatibility,” said Salmond.
Her favourite wine is an excellent white Meursault, which she described as a treat, akin to how wine was viewed throughout the pandemic, with Salmond adding that recognised as an essential service, the industry had come off relatively okay, with people opting for wine as a treat and comfort throughout the pandemic which benefitted businesses like Odyssey Wines.
Sold domestically and internationally in restaurants and fine wine stores in Thailand, Singapore, across the Pacific, and China, Salmond said that in the future, she hopes to continue improving the quality of Odyssey Wines and its unique offering of single vineyard wines.
“Small producers rock and are often experimenting with the wines and ensuring it stays current for everyone.”
