Below is an excerpt from an article by Sunday Star Times which features Amoise Wines. Read the full article here.
"There’s a new way to do house wine - make one"
Sunday Star Times
Sapeer Mayron
Published November 16, 2025
Often, the ‘house’ drop at a bar or restaurant is the cheapest – not necessarily the worst, but certainly not the top shelf stuff.
But at Camina Restaurant in the Coromandel’s Whangamatā and Bodega in Auckland, the house wine is the opposite: it’s a bespoke blend, hand-picked by the owners and made in collaboration with winemakers.
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Nearly 200 kilometres away, a similar friendship was fermenting, between the chef and restaurateur of Camina in Whangamatā and winemakers from Hawke’s Bay.
Barend Beukes and Rowan Crowe opened Camina in the coastal town (which bursts with sunseekers in summer and is sleepy otherwise) in late 2023, and will celebrate two years this December – almost the same time as Bodega (another charming coincidence).
In their Spanish-style eatery, with a summertime laneway bar and a menu of mostly flamecooked food, the pair had been choosy about which wines they offered, working directly with growers and getting to know them.
“We are supporting people trying to do something new and positive,” Crowe says. “Most of our wines are natural and organic, coming from a new generation of winemakers – it’s fun getting to be part of that.”
So when Amy Farnsworth of Amoise Wines in Hawke’s Bay made the trip to Whangamatā to meet the men she’d been selling to for over a year, the trio found themselves quickly becoming friends, and before long Farnsworth suggested they blend a wine together.
Crowe, Beukes and their families travelled to Amoise and got to be part of the entire process, even gently stomping on the grapes to extract their juices.
What they landed on was a syrah with “a splash” of cabernet franc – a combination Farnsworth never would have tried doing herself, and blending grapes from two different vineyards for the first time.
“The syrah on its own is a nice fresh and punchy wine, but we needed a wine with a little more body and subtle tannin influence to hold up to the influence of the fire smoke on the food,” she says.
The cabernet franc grapes, fermented in oak barrels, did exactly that.
“It was kind of cool because from our end, we’re not experienced winemakers so we don't know what grapes go together, what blends well, what doesn’t,” Crowe says.
“But we had Amy there, and her partner is from Craggy Range, so we had the support from people who know what they’re talking about, and also the joy of being new, and when you don’t have the understanding saying hey, let’s try that thing.”
Crowe’s wife and business partner, artist Jessica Crow, painted the illustration for the label, and they held a “wine release party” on Labour weekend, featuring special guests Jono Thevenard and Kaz Suzuki (from Pici in Auckland’s St Kevin’s Arcade) – more friends, who helped design a menu that not only complemented the new blend but even used it: a lamb shoulder cooked in Amoise x Camina red with fire grilled mushrooms and pecorino.
By the end of the night, Thevenard was planning their next collaboration, Crowe laughs.
“I mean, it’s the joy of doing things with other people,” he says.
“It was so fun having them in the house, especially for our chefs to get to be around because you just feel, really isolated down here, so having people like Jono and Kaz to chat ideas with, it was great.”
