As the ‘nineties draw to a close, New Zealand’s wine industry can reflect on a decade of positive change. It is making better wine than ever before from a range of varieties and in a plethora of styles. It is also making more wine than ever, yet is still unable to meet its present export demand. To briefly talk numbers, in 1988 New Zealand had 112 wineries and a crop of 51,509 tonnes from 4,300 ha of productive vineyard. Ten years later, its 1998 vintage of 78,300 tonnes was comfortably a national record, cropped from around 7,400 ha of producing vineyard. Last year its area under vine topped 9,000 ha and its number of wineries reached around 310, a number expected to reach 350 by June this year. Sounds a lot, but it still represents a mere 0.2% of world wine production. More importantly, New Zealanders are rapidly discovering how to marry such things as grape variety, terroir and their approach to vineyard management. The result is a wider spectrum of quality and diversity than we might have imagined just possible just a few years ago. For years sauvignon blanc reigned supreme and unchallenged, save for a plethora of rather grassy, angular and over-made chardonnays. A decade ago Australians would habitually stare down their noses at sugary Kiwi rieslings. A small, but brave collection of red wines tended to taste as if they had been cross-bred with sauvignon blanc, while the few remaining stalwarts of the gewurztraminer variety were still hoping to lose their bridesmaid status as The Next Big Thing after chardonnay. Grapes were habitually planted near the major population centres, especially Auckland, whose humid climate and urban spread have since combined to displace viticulture to more suitable areas like Gisborne and Hawkes Bay, places which, according to Matua Valley winemaker Mark Robertson, used to be ‘where you went surfing after vintage’. How things have changed. Sauvignon blanc, the variety which put New Zealand wine onto many of the finest dining tables of England via the palates and writings of Oz Clarke and a brace of other English wine scribes, has simply become better and better. Especially if the rather flabby, sweaty examples of the unusually warm 1998 vintage are given some latitude. After a decade of fine-tuning viticultural practices there’s new purity and intensity to be found in the tropical and gooseberry fruit expression of sauvignon blanc from the Wairau Valley, home to most of the plantings in the Marlborough region in the north of NZ’s South Island. Its young and largely alluvial soils contrast with those of the spectacular, but more southerly Awatere Valley, whose stony river terraces engender wines of superb length and an almost austere flinty palate with bracing, minerally acidity. Given that the principal attraction of sauvignon blanc is its racy, uninhibited concentration and impact, it’s something of a mystery to me why so many New Zealand wine companies seek to release ‘reserve’ styles of this variety which tend to say more about their maker’s competence than what their vineyards can really express. If you barrel ferment sauvignon blanc, leave it for several months on fermentation lees, put at least part of it through malolactic fermentation and then mature it in toasty new oak, it’s almost inevitable that you impair the grape’s ability to deliver its best. There are one or two exceptions, and a few such wines, like Villa Maria’s Reserve Wairau Valley Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough) and Sacred Hill’s Barrel Fermented Sauvignon Blanc (Hawkes Bay) are sufficiently deftly made to work and to work very well, but too many of the rest are just too fat and soupy. That said, the fruit-driven and unwooded wines of Hunters (Marlborough), Grove Mill (Marlborough), Giesen (Canterbury), Shingle Peak (Marlborough), Villa Maria (various), Vavasour (Marlborough), Lake Chalice (Marlborough) and Framingham (Marlborough), continue to underpin how good and how distinctive unwooded New Zealand sauvignon blanc can really be. Contemporary New Zealand chardonnay is a far cry from the broadly over-oaked and over-blown wines of the mid-‘eighties, many of which ably aped ours in terms of their abject lack of balance and understanding of what the grape was all about. The modern wines present a more pure, intense expression of ripe fruit, while the best of them have been augmented by deft touches of modern and traditional winemaking influence. Most regions have their high-quality small producers, while new areas like Gisborne will ably support larger volume labels with fresh, citrusy varietal flavours. It’s intriguing to observe the extent to which the Mendoza clone of chardonnay, whose intense, low-cropped flavours of ruby grapefruit and pineapple give so much to the better chardonnays of WA, has become NZ’s most widely sought-after quality clone. There’s clearly something which should be familiar to Australian wine enthusiasts in wines such as the Church Road Reserve Chardonnay (Hawkes Bay), the Sacred Hill Rifleman’s Chardonnay (Hawkes Bay), Vidal Reserve Chardonnay (40% Mendoza, Hawkes Bay) and Palliser Chardonnay (Martinborough). I also found it fascinating that those responsible for judging the chardonnay classes at last year’s Air New Zealand Wine Awards took a substantially broader approach than adopted by the plethora of large company winemakers who control the judging of Australian wine shows. Gold medals were actually awarded to wines which revealed substantial, but careful oxidative and on-lees handling in their making, wines like the Matua Valley Matheson Vineyard Chardonnay 1997 and Villa Maria Reserve Barrique Fermented Chardonnay 1996. There’s an element of sophistication in these wines found lacking in so many award winners in Australian wine shows. Made with a more judicious application of newer and better oak, other wines like Kumeu River’s reserved, austere Kumeu Chardonnay, and its creamy, mealy Mate’s Vineyard Chardonnay (both Kumeu), the brilliantly complex Fromm’s Reserve Chardonnay (Marlborough), Te Mata Estate’s consistent and heavily worked Elston Chardonnay (Hawke’s Bay) and Ata Rangi’s exotic and savoury Craighall Chardonnay (Martinborough) are each world-class wines able to shine in any company. A contrasting style, Vavasour’s Chardonnay (Awatere Valley, Marlborough) has a racy, flinty structure punctuated with piercing fruit flavours. I agree with people like Mark Robertson who can’t see any reason why Marlborough shouldn’t become one of the world’s great riesling areas. While riesling remains a grape which the world still struggles to understand, New Zealand riesling today expresses a variety of distinctively aromatic and musky styles, often made more Germanic still by their makers’ regular and deliberate retention of residual sugar. They complement, rather than compete against, the ‘dry spatlese’ Australian style now exemplified by makers like Grosset and Petaluma. From a Marlborough specialist, Framingham’s Classic Riesling 1998 is a leading example, bursting with fresh pears and apples, before finishing slightly sweet with around 10 g/litre of sugar, a level not all uncommon in New Zealand. Framingham’s Dry Riesling 1997 reflects a more recent approach to ferment out all available sugars, creating a cleanness and length of musky ripe fruit that I find extremely appealing. Other leading makers of drier rieslings include Esk Valley (Hawkes Bay), whose Black Label Riesling 1998 simply bursts with tropical fruits, pineapple and pear, and Coopers Creek, justly known for the keeping ability of its Hawkes Bay Riesling, of which the 1994 wines is a wonderfully expressive and complex example. Palliser’s 1998 Riesling (Martinborough) retains a lightly sweet finish to counter its fresh acidity and pear/lime fruit. From a much warmer vintage than usual, Villa Maria’s Private Bin Marlborough Riesling 1998 is almost Australian in its rich length of dry, tangy fruit, while its lean and steely Reserve Marlborough Riesling 1997 offers interesting limey aromas also strangely suggestive of Vogel bread. Selaks fashion a tangy, more phenolic style from Marlborough, while Corbans is justly known for its tangy, fresh and tropical Estate Marlborough Riesling. Almost a mirror-image of fine German Kabinett, Millton’s Opou Vineyard Riesling (Gisborne) conceals its sweetness beneath intense, musky tropical and pear-like fruit and clean, zesty acids. It was originally gewurztraminer that brought New Zealand’s wine to the attention of the world. It’s as hard a sell today as ever before, although some modern Kiwi traminers pack all the classically fragrant, spicy and musky aromas, oily structure and concentration to make them the closest thing I have seen to the best from Alsace. A fine example is the 1997 wine from Huia (Marlborough), whose delicate rose petal aromas and musky, oily texture and savoury finish stamp it as definitive a traminer one could wish to taste. Developed, sweetish and rather botrytised, Montana’s ‘Q’ Patutahi Estate Gewurztraminer 1996 is concentrated, mature and ready to open. Kemblefield is a Hawkes Bay vineyard whose traminer is one of the country’s better drier styles, packed full of lychees and pineapples, with the round, fleshy texture of a fine Alsatian example. The phenomenon of top-class New Zealand pinot noir, especially those leading the way at Martinborough, namely Martinborough Vineyard, Ata Rangi, Dry River, Palliser, has been well documented elsewhere. Similarly, the classy pinots of Giesen (Canterbury), Fromm (Marlborough), Rippon (Otago)and others are attracting well deserved attention. I have also seen enough to be seriously interested in the progress of the pinot noirs from Vavasour, Lintz (Martinborough) and Isabel Estate (Marlborough), whose plump, fragrant and remarkably Volnay-like 1997 vintage says much for the potential of this large vineyard. It’s something of a concern to discover the extent to which the New Zealand wine industry is apparently happy to pin so many of its hopes on cabernet sauvignon, a grape that has consistently struggled for ripeness there. The earlier-ripening merlot variety, so often used to plug the holes left by under-ripe cabernet, is also being planted widely, but perhaps not sufficiently. Let’s hope that kiwi growers are not fooled into thinking they don’t need merlot by the unusual and constant warmth of recent vintages. The epicentre of Kiwi hopes and expectations for the red Bordeaux varieties remains in the Hawkes Bay region, where for a decade and more Te Mata Estate has set a cracking pace with its very classy, restrained Coleraine and Awatea red blends of cabernet sauvignon and merlot. Much of the excitement in Hawkes Bay is focused around relatively new inland sites along Gimblett Road, whose alluvial shingle deposits are almost entirely devoid of topsoil. Without constant watering, vines would not survive there, so in an unusually warm and virtually hydroponic environment they ripen around a fortnight earlier than neighbouring vineyards, producing a concentration and ripeness hitherto unconceivable in New Zealand. Trinity Hill, John Hancock’s exciting new venture, has already impressed NZ’s wine judges with its powerful, brooding Gimblett Road Cabernet Sauvignon 1997, a wine whose strength and intensity could hardly contrast more profoundly with the thin, weedy cabernets traditionally associated with New Zealand. Driven by a desire to emulate the legendary status of Stephen White’s Stonyridge Vineyard, whose Larose is justly considered New Zealand’s benchmark Bordeaux-inspired red blend, hordes of wine industry professionals and professional retirees are settling down and planting on Auckland’s former hippy haven of Waiheke Island. While its hilly topography will not encourage the large-scale plantings preferred by larger companies, Waiheke’s favourable northern slopes are already reasserting their potential with wines like Goldwater’s superbly structured and earthy Merlot 1997. There can be little doubt that merlot is destined to play more of a role in New Zealand’s future, which will give it every chance to concentrate on making fully ripened, but more elegant and restrained impressions of Bordeaux-inspired reds, the very sorts of wines which no longer appear to interest many makers in Australia.
