Didier Mariotti wanted to be a brewer but ended up as chief winemaker at Mumm Champagne. I guess they’re not too dissimiliar: yeast, sugar and bubbles. But the Corsican-born Mariotti was perhaps always destined for wine. His grandmother’s brother was Burgundy winemaker Charles Rousseau of the great Domaine Rousseau and his cousin is Eric Rousseau, current winemaker at Domaine Rousseau with whom he swaps Champagne in exchange for Grand Cru Burgundy. We all need cousins like that.
Didier was on holiday in New Zealand but gave up one of his precious days to launch the 1999 Cuvee Lalou, Mumm’s prestige cuvee, in Auckland. The poor guy had to sit next to me badgering him with technical questions with just eight weeks to go until the Master of Wine exam. He said he was going to go for a nana nap after the lunch – I must have worn him out.
While the organisers of the tasting had decided to centre the tasting around how the wine changed in structure between two different serving temperatures, I was keen to know more about rosé Champagne.
Rosé Champagne is the only European wine permitted to blend red wine with white wine to make a pink. Everyone else has to use the saignee a.k.a bleeding off method.
Most houses add a proportion of red wine to their ‘normal’ NV brut cuvee to make rosé. The more red wine you use, the greater the colour, structure and red fruit character. Bollinger uses just 5-6% red wine in its rosé and it is pale – a tinted white as opposed to a red fruited rosé. Mumm has 12% red wine in its rosé and, one-quarter of Piper Heidsieck’s Rosé Sauvage is actually red wine making a deeply coloured, powerful and aromatic pink.
So, why don’t more people use the saignée method in Champagne? Mariotti explained: “It is difficult to control the colour with saignée. It’s ok for making small volumes of wine but with larger volumes you need to maintain the consistency of the colour through the blending of the red into weight.”
The first ever female on Unfiltered (apart from me, of course) is Anna Flowerday, co-owner of Te Whare Ra in Marlborough, formerly known as Beavertown (yes, really). She takes a break from the 2011 vintage and her two sets of twin daughters (yes, two sets!) to star on Unfiltered.
Waipara winery Muddy Water has been sold for an undisclosed sum to fellow Waipara producer Greystone.
Jane East, co-owner of Muddy Water told rebeccagibb.com: “The reality is that our children do not want to go into the wine business so we didn’t have a line of succession.”
Greystone was looking to build a winery and after initial talks with the Easts decided to make an offer.
Muddy Water is certified organic and Greystone’s Angela Clifford confirmed it would remain organic and separate to the non-organic Greystone brand.
It is unclear if there will be any job losses at this stage with overlaps between the two producers inevitable but East indicated “most of the staff will be staying on”.
It’s an interesting time to be expanding after the February 22 earthquake devastated Waipara’s main, and most profitable, market. Its loss of the Rugby World Cup games will also have a significant impact on winery visitor numbers.
Yet this is a positive move by Greystone in a difficult period. This acquisition could be a sign of things to come in the industry: are the banks now more willing to lend money to wineries to expand and go on the acquisition trail?
William Hoare, GM of Fromm in Marlborough, takes a break from the 2011 vintage and has his turn on Unfiltered. Why are they making Syrah in Marlborough and what is his fascination with Martinborough winemaker Larry McKenna?!
The 2011 harvest in New Zealand is underway and it look like it’ll be a record beating 310,000 tonnes.
The industry’s marketing body, New Zealand Winegrowers, is putting a positive spin on this, pointing out bottled wine exports are growing beyond initial forecasts but this sort of bumper crop is exactly what it has been trying to avoid.
Stock levels seem to be coming back into balance, according to one Auckland broker. “Producers don’t have any spare Sauvignon Blanc. A year ago there was about 30 million litres of it floating around and now there’s none.”
Around 18 months ago, you could pick up a litre of NZ Sauvignon Blanc for as little as $1.85 (it probably didn’t taste great, admittedly) whereas it’s now up to $3-3.25, according to members of the industry, which indicates that excess supplies have been largely drained.
Finally, the industry is starting to see light at the end of the tunnel but this vintage could see that light extinguished. The next two months will be crucial.
Homeless wine?
You have to wonder if there are enough machine harvesters, presses and tanks to cope with a crop of 310,000 tonnes.
Back in 2008, when the harvest was a record 285,000, the infrastructure failed to cope. Is there anywhere to put an extra 25,000 tonnes of fruit? And what happens if the weather turns ugly towards the end of the season, and everyone wants to get their grapes in before rot kicks in? Good luck finding a machine to harvest it and a tank to put it in.
