New Zealand’s winemakers descend on Lord’s cricket ground to show their wares today. While their countrymen are getting trounced on the field by Pakistan, the wine industry is in slightly better health with 33% growth in sales in the past year (Nielsen, MAT to October 2010). The average bottle price has dipped below £6 but it still boasts the highest price per bottle out of any country in the world.
If you are heading off to the tasting today, have a plan of action or you’ll be wasting valuable time. You might already have cherry-picked the tables you’ll be visiting but if not, here’s a few producers you ought to visit.
Table 9: Elephant Hill, Hawke’s Bay
Under German ownership and with a restrained Old World character to the wines, be sure to have a taste of the Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Syrah.
Table 10: Schubert, Martinborough
Er, another German owner. There seems to be a theme emerging here. Kai Schubert’s Sauvignon Blanc and Decanter trophy-winning Pinot Noirs will be available to taste. Worth the shuffle to the table, I promise.
Table 14: Felton Road, Central Otago
A British owner this time – Nigel Greening. In all honesty, Felton Road doesn’t need any introduction. Its wines are the bees knees and everybody knows it, particularly its Pinot Noirs – Cornish Point, Calvert Road, Block 5 and Block 3. Its Riesling with 45g/l residual sugar is also attractive. Get your elbows out and get your glass to the front of the queue.
Table 25: Framingham, Marlborough
Geordie winemaker Andrew Hedley will be in town to talk you through his delicious wines. It’s difficult to fault them. They’re all classy and restrained (strange, considering they’re made by someone from grotty Gateshead), particularly the Riesling and an interesting new addition to the range - a Montepulciano Rosato. If you’re bored of discussing residual sugar and tannin, talk cricket with Hedley – he was at the Gabba for the Ashes. Lucky sod.
Table 31: Man O’War, Waiheke
With Germans and Brits in the room, we shouldn’t really mention the war. Nevertheless, the Man O’War wines show Waiheke at its best. Just 40 minutes by ferry from Auckland central, my favourite wine of the moment from this vineyard is the 2010 Gravestone Sauvignon/Semillon blend although the Dreadnought Syrah receives the most rave reviews.
Table 32: Pegasus Bay, Waipara
Finally a Kiwi family running a Kiwi winery. Fellow MW student Lynnette Hudson and her party animal husband Matt Donaldson make the wine. If Matt is in town watch out for him and Matthew Jukes – they’ll likely be painting the town red and all hell will have broken loose! The Rieslings are the stars but its Sauvignon/Semillon blends also attract interest for their sulphidey style.
Ok, there are heaps of others I could recommend but I’d be here all day. Let me know how the wines perform – better than their cricket team, I hope…
John Buchanan, who founded Mt Riley in 1992, has some great stories of his life in the wine industry, many of which I have promised not to put into print. In his early days, he worked at London wine merchant Rutherford, Osborne, Perkins before it was sold to Martini Rossi in the 1960’s. At that time Serena Sutcliffe MW, the head of Sotheby’s wine department was the company’s typist. How she has climbed up the ranks…
At that time Louis Roederer was the company’s house wine and cost £3 a bottle on account. “It was an everyday plonk,” he says.
Since his days of drinking cheap Roederer, he has held a number of roles in the industry including CFO at Corbans.
Now 18 years-old, Mt Riley has 103 hectares under vine and exports 70% of its production. Buchanan’s mother was a Marlborough girl so he does have family connections to the region unlike many newcomers. However, this has its drawbacks. She was one of nine and ‘all of the relatives came out of the woodwork’ when they heard there was wine up for grabs.
His daughter, Amy, heads up marketing and her now-husband, Matt Murphy, is the winemaker. And he’s foolishly agreed to do a Christmas Unfiltered. Thanks for being a good sport, Matt…
Following the demise of Sauternes property Chateau Broustet and its sale to an Italian buyer in late September, it’s all guns blazing for the family’s other property Chateau Saint-Marc.
Export and marketing manager, Guillaume Forcade had fought valiantly to save his family’s chateau with savvy marketing and sales. He had packaged some of the estate’s wines in test tubes and the brand had become involved in Vogue and Mercedes parties but it was too little too late and he is now concentrating his efforts on Saint-Marc.
The wine will be available in tubes during French Tuesdays in San Francisco. Whether you drink it “from the tube or slipped inside a handbag”, it’s certainly a different approach for a very traditional appellation. No glass; no foie gras? God forbid, the wrinklies won’t like it.
However, the whole sweet wine market faces an uphill battle with sales in freefall. The French have cut their Sauternes consumption from 83,536hl in 1999/2000, to 54,477hl in 2008/09. The appellation’s vineyard area has fallen from 4139ha to 3773ha in the same period. At the very least, it’s going to take young blood with new ideas to stem the tide. Good luck to them, they are going to need it.
Ben Glover, winemaker at Wither Hills, has his turn on Unfiltered - on a very windy day. If he wasn’t making wine he’d be milking a cow and would go gay for Hugh Jackman….nice choice.
Delicious food. When it came. I was almost ready to eat my hand by the time we got fed at the Air New Zealand Awards on Saturday night. 9 p.m and still no entree. I should have brought a sausage roll or bag of crisps in my handbag. It was a great event and opera singer, Aivale Cole’s, performance was spine tingling but was it a looooong night.
I have never been to a wine awards where the winners are allowed to make a speech. Is this a good idea? We know you want to thank your viticulturist, marketing team and Aunty Ethel but geez did they go on, and on. And the presenter, Petra somebody, a TV presenter so famous I’d never heard of her insisted on reading out all the tasting notes for the winning wines. Thanks, but we can read.
By the time dinner was finally finished, somewhere around midnight, I had lost my impetus. And my dancing shoes had walked off.
And the winner is
Anyway, now I’ve had a moan, Pinot Noir was the big winner of the night with 31 golds. For all the winners, click here.
And the champion trophy winner was also a Pinot Noir from Peregrine in Central Otago.
Steve Smith of Craggy Range and chair of judges, admitted: “There will no doubt be a bit of bleating about the 31 Pinot Noir gold winners.”
He then made a rousing speech on getting behind the fickle red variety: “I now wish to lay down the gauntlet to the evangelists who believe in our Pinot Noir,” he said.
“It’s time to throw off the shroud of conservatism. We should unite in our parochialism.”
“New Zealand Pinot Noir will take all the wines of New Zealand with it…and we must continue to invest in our most successful style - Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.”
Smith urged his fellow Kiwi producers to take a bit of the Australian out of the Australians, and shout about how great New Zealand wine is rather than being so modest. And I have to agree. Less of the shrinking wallflower, please.
Don’t drink too much
Stuart Smith, chair of NZ Winegrowers, also made some interesting points at the start of the night, no doubt with the NZ government’s impending liquor reform on his mind - and making sure the wine industry didn’t get too pissed that night and embarrass itself.
“Up to 1961 it was illegal to serve wine and food together to preserve our moral fibre,” he began. “And it delivered some of the worst service standards in the world”. There may even have been a mention of New Zealand being the inspiration for Fawlty Towers.
“In 2011 our industry and our world class tourist industry will be under the microscope like never before when we host the Rugby World Cup.”
“We are all about being world class. It is always about quality not quantity,” he added.
“We need to be clear what we stand for. Responsible drinking is about good food, sociability and enjoyment. It is not about drunkenness.”
Still, there were probably some sore heads on Sunday morning and walking through Auckland city centre afterwards, it was clear that more needs to be done to tackle irresponsible drinking than a liquor reform.