In 1863, Charles Levet and his son William planted vines on the Kaipara Harbour, near Wellsford, north of Auckland. New Zealand was a very different place to grow and sell wine. Imported European wines dominated, local winegrowing was small and uncertain, and there was no established industry to make the venture easy. The Levets went ahead anyway.
Their vineyard covered about 2.8 hectares. Historical accounts describe vines trained on mānuka trellises and wines made in styles familiar to nineteenth-century drinkers, including port, sherry and Madeira. The business survived for more than four decades. It supplied wine to an early licensed wine bar in Auckland, an intriguing glimpse of a New Zealand wine culture developing long before the industry we know today.
Charles Levet was the great-great-grandfather of Jules Stephan, the founder of Q Wine. This is a family connection rather than an unbroken wine business: the vineyards were established in different regions, more than a century apart. Yet it gives Jules’s own interest in wine an intriguing historical context.
Long before buying land, Jules enjoyed collecting wine and building an interesting personal cellar. He was drawn to the differences between producers, places and vintages, and to the way a bottle could become more revealing with time. That curiosity eventually turned towards the possibility of growing wine himself. In 2003 he bought a sheep paddock in the Waitaki Valley, North Otago, where the soils and cool climate suggested that Pinot Noir might have a future.
The connection with Charles Levet was not a blueprint for the new vineyard. Jules was making his own decision, in a very different place and time. What makes the family history worth telling is the unexpected echo: two generations, far apart, prepared to explore what New Zealand land might offer to wine.
The first vines were planted in 2005 and the first vintage followed in 2010. The vineyard now grows Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Chardonnay.
The story of Q is therefore not one of inherited vineyards or an established family estate. It is a personal interest that became a long-term commitment, with a remarkable piece of New Zealand wine history in the family background.