Pinot noir, the most elusive of all wines, has a habit of conjuring some of the most mystical place names on planet earth. Just to read them is enough to be lured into the sort of temptation the pinot noir enthusiast knows only too well: Vosne-Romanee, Nuits-St-Georges, Gevrey-Chambertin, Pommard! Martinborough. Martinborough? You would have to be kidding, your average Francophile would declare! But that’s the problem with most Francophiles I’ve met: they don’t recognise quality for what it is unless it’s pronounced with a French accent. I recently returned from a period of reconnaissance, to keep the French flavour lingering, in New Zealand’s North Island. It was my intention to return to Melbourne, Australia’s Capital City of Pinot Noir, with a reinforced opinion about the pinot noir phenomenon that is taking this country by storm, Martinborough. It was no false claim to include Martinborough amongst the names of the world’s most drinkable homes of pinot noir. This is a special place. You reach it after an invigorating drive from Wellington up and over the Tararua Range and down onto the terraced flood plains of the Ruamahanga and Huangarua Rivers, on whose free-draining gravelly silt loams Martinborough’s vineyards are planted. Some of the sites have a quality almost reminiscent of the southern Rhone, as exposed small and washed stones reflect the sun’s heat back into the grapevine canopy above. Today the remaining gaps between established vineyards are rapidly being filled, for there’s only so much quality land in Martinborough and its wines have captured the imagination of the world. It may be the driest region on New Zealand’s North Island, yet it is one of the windiest. Young trees need all the help they can get push back into the southerlies from the Cook Strait and regular northwesterly gales. But the rainshadow caused by the Tararuas, which effectively creates a dry border three miles to Martinborough’s north, always brings a smile to the face of the local grower. Combine its long, dry and temperate autumns with plenty of sunshine hours in the day with its relatively infertile principal soils, and you have the key factors behind the region’s success. The first winery to introduce Martinborough’s name to a world clamouring for quality alternatives to the expense and relative inconsistency of Burgundy actually bears the name of the small town itself, Martinborough Vineyards. Since his arrival to head its production before the 1986 vintage, Larry McKenna has crafted a succession of wines so utterly and completely generous in most of the things in which top pinot should be, that I doubt whether many pinot producers anywhere could have matched the tasting he showed me of wines made between 1988 and 1997. Young Martinborough Vineyard pinots burst with ripe cherry and herbal, mineral notes, before developing into the classic gamey and almost ethereal range of flavours peculiar to top-notch pinot noir. The 1997 wine, from a classic vintage, is a marvellous example, with a fleshy, sappy mouthfeel and fine-grained tannins. McKenna’s rarer, more refined and concentrated Reserve Pinot Noirs are only made in top vintages. They’re only sourced from low-cropping vineyards, are given extended time in fine-grained French oak of a mixture of ages and are only released at three years of age. The forthcoming 1996 release is perhaps the winery’s best pinot noir yet, a wine which opens to reveal a multitude of layers and complexity, great fruit intensity and velvet tannins. It should be imprisoned for another five to eight years, no parole granted. Clive Paton is a thoughtful, quietly spoken ex-farmer who purchased Ata Rangi’s first vineyard site in 1980. From its small beginnings in Paton’s first winery, built in 1987, Ata Rangi now sources from around 55 acres of vines of varying age. Paton’s target is for 4,000 cases of premium pinot noir, a figure double that of the low yielding 1998 vintage and almost treble that of the especially grudging 1997. This wine, presently available in tiny quantities, is sumptuously structured and textured, boasting all the fruit highlights this region can bestow, with the weight and power Paton seeks in his expression of wine’s Holy Grail, a classic pinot. Some of his vines come from what he jokingly calls the ‘gumboot clone’, a type of pinot noir propagated from a cutting found in the gumboot of an airline passenger returning to New Zealand. The quarantine officer who discovered it planted out cuttings once it had been through quarantine and Paton took his original vines from that vineyard. The nub of the issue is that the original cutting was taken from the vineyard of Romanee-Conti, Burgundy’s most famous vineyard. Ata Rangi’s recent vintages include three absolute stars: 1994, 1996 and 1997, while the 1998, a reflection of a warmer and exceptionally dry summer and autumn, might ultimately be even a fraction more structured and powerful than Paton would consider to be ideal. That said, parcels I have seen suggest he could yet blend together a remarkable wine. Martinborough’s most iconoclastic pinot noirs are those of Dry River, progeny of the radical approach taken by owner and winemaker Neil McCallum. McCallum’s expression of pinot noir is so ethereal, wild and brambly that his combination of site and personality almost threaten to over-ride the essential features of pinot noir itself. It will take time to see into what, exactly, the spicy, exotic pinot noirs of Dry River ultimately evolve, but it’s my bet that the remarkable intensity of red and black fruit with which Martinborough is able to imbue its pinot noir will ultimately come through, revealing some of the most astonishing wines yet made outside France. Dry River’s are amongst the most scarce and expensive of Martinborough’s wines. Palliser is the region’s fourth important maker of pinot noir. Made by Allan Johnson, its pinot commences life a little closed and chunky, cloaked a little too closely with smoky new oak influence. That’s only a temporary affair, for with only a few months, Palliser’s pinot blossoms into a velvet-smooth, deeply concentrated expression of dark, ripe and almost sour fruits. Both the 1996 and 1997 vintages are exceptional wines and both, I would add, are particularly affordable. There are today over twenty wineries in Martinborough, many more vineyards, and a heap more besides at varying stages ‘twixt drawing board and turning the ground. My experience would suggest that the names to watch out for, as they aim to be included in the region’s top echelon of pinot makers, are Voss Estate, Te Kairanga, Lintz Estate, Walnut Ridge, Nga Waka and Muirlea Rise. You might do worse than to remember them.
