Extraordinary controversy over one of New Zealand’s more promising up-and-coming wineries has seen Lintz Estate actually return the Trophy it won with its 1997 Shiraz for the ‘Best Red in the competition, other than Merlot, Cabernet and Pinot Noir’ to the Air New Zealand Wine Show. In a remarkable chain of events, the judges of the show decided that the Lintz Estate Shiraz 1997 served at the award dinner was not the same as the wine that won the award, nor was it good enough to have won it. Interestingly, Lintz Estate was due to go public to raise capital just hours later. The issue was investigated by the organisers of the show, the Wine Institute of New Zealand, and the conclusion was reached that while no breach of rules was observed, ‘the blending and bottling techniques Lintz used resulted in marked differences between bottles of the same wine’. The winery management claims they had ‘relatively small quantities of the 1997 Shiraz in several batches from different sites and picking dates’. While they would choose to keep them separate is beyond me, but had I perpetrated this deed I would have made sure that the judges only ever tasted the best wine!
