amy hopkinson styles
& katie riley

Both Amy & Katie have always known what they wanted to do and then quite simply, have gone and done it - we felt their shared commitment to their respective crafts made them a match made in heaven.

ON AMY

I'm struggling to remember how we met Amy but I feel like we might have been fan-girling in her DM’s and then we decided to grab a coffee when she was up in Tāmaki. The first time we met her we had such a refreshingly open conversation - about the bigger picture of food and wine and about things that have nothing to do with food and wine. I remember thinking it's quite a unique thing when people who are essentially strangers can find that place of comfort so quickly. 

Amy is one half of Halcyon Days - an organic wine label she makes with her partner in all parts of life, Olly. 

Amy dabbled in hospo from a young age, working various kitchen jobs throughout high school and uni. With relatives working in the vineyards, wine was always part of Amy’s picture with the family dinner table regularly playing host to socked wines ready for tasting and guessing. Amy always wanted to do something in wine but when it rolled around for her to start university, viticulture was only something that could be studied at a postgrad level so she did her undergrad in politics prior to studying at Lincoln. When we found this out, we felt it made perfect sense because Amy looks at the world and her wine through a multitude of lenses. 

Amy did her first-ever vintage in the Hawkes Bay, which is where she has fittingly come full circle and now resides with Olly and their two kids, Henry and Bertie. After her first vintage, Amy set her sights on getting some European experience and left for Champagne. It was 2003 and a bad year for the bubs so she headed off to Spain where she worked a vintage that was SO good the owners built a Winery/Bodega at the end of it. Amy stayed in Spain for the better part of a decade, flitting over to London to do a bit of judging and teaching alongside working toward her MW - a qualification that a wildly small number of people have. 

There was a snippet in time before it became obscenely expensive when London was the centre of the international wine world. Amy was there at the time and talks to this period of her life fondly, a time when she met lifelong friends and a bunch of bloody interesting people. It was also the time when she met Olly. Olly was part of the team running the Decanter Awards and Amy was judging. From then they were inseparable, with Olly moving to Spain to join Amy but also to try his own hand at wine having predominantly been on the writing end of things. Having both done vintages in Aotearoa, they knew they would one day end up back here and so moved to the Hawkes Bay to start two families - one of kids, and one of wine. 

Creating Halcyon Days was a logical progression in Amy and Olly’s respective careers - but their kaupapa feels special. The pair create wine they want to drink themselves, with less focus on yielding a particular type of grape but rather choosing to create responsively to what the land produces. Amy spoke of their desire to focus on energy, texture and tension - wines that pay an ode to the land and a moment in time, attempting to distil the essence of a place. Amy laughs telling me she isn’t quite sure if they are succeeding at their objective, but regardless the intention feels as important here. 

Halcyon Days is certified organic, so the process of growing the grapes and the process of creating the wine is as mindful as it gets. The more I learn about wine the more I learn it really is a labour of love bundled into a tidy 750ml bottle. Each part - from the picking and pressing, to the first time it hits your tongue is collective - nothing exists in isolation.

Halcyon Days is Amy & Olly living their values. We always look to work with people whose values are aligned with ours and we are stoked to have Amy in town for a few days to share her beautiful wine and thoughts, alongside delish food by the delightful Katie Riley. What a team! 

Like most of us, Amy’s favourite flower is ever-changing, in flux with the last seedlings she and her youngest son Bertie have grown - for now it's the Cosmos Sea Shell.