Jane Parkinson explores New Zealand’s fine wines

New Zealand is a surprisingly small player on the world’s wine scene, but the nation makes up for it in the scope and incredible quality across its styles.

It beggars belief that New Zealand makes only one per cent of the world’s wine by volume. No matter how often I hear this number, I find myself involuntarily shaking my head in disbelief. The fame! The distribution! The column inches (and yes, this is a case in point)! And still just one per cent? It’s astounding, yet true. Moreover, the country hit its goal of $2 billion worth of exports last year.

How have they done it? The cutest answer would surely be ‘sauvalanche’, referring to the nation’s hugely successful sauvignon blanc. But as lucrative as that variety has been for New Zealand, it isn’t all a bed of roses. It seems many moons ago now – 2007, to be precise – New Zealand winemaker Kim Crawford warned a local rag that sauvignon blanc was a ‘strong but vulnerable leg’ on which his local wine industry stood. Notwithstanding the reliance on just one grape to pay the bills, Kim was referring to the age-old global wine industry issue of big guys versus little; the former giving a region/ grape presence and clout, the latter trying to make ends meet in the face of stiff margin competition from its larger neighbours.

On the face of things, you could say not that much has changed in the past 14 years, except New Zealand has navigated tricky sauvignon blanc waters incredibly well, in my mind, with the grape’s evolution just as impressive as its quality consistency. Heeding warnings of boredom from wine drinkers, which is actually still yet to happen, and rather than losing its horde of diehard tuttifrutti sauvignon drinkers, the Kiwis confidently developed a portion of their famous grape into a more complex and potentially more ageworthy style. In doing so, they’ve killed two birds with one stone, providing drinkers with a more serious wine while offering more choice of flavour, texture and price.

All this has been achieved through a raft of winery experiments, including indigenous yeasts, extended lees ageing and the introduction of barrels, or more subtle barrel usage, to take the texture, flavour, elegance and fruit characters to a new level. Cleverly, many producers didn’t mess with their cash cow and instead introduced an extra sauvignon blanc style to their portfolio. However, even though sauvignon blanc still dominates the New Zealand scene by some distance (63 per cent of the total producing area), the commitment to other varieties has been extremely conscientious, too. With riesling and pinot gris unequivocally the success stories for the aromatic grapes to date, interesting results are appearing with the likes of grüner veltliner and even more so with the native Galician grape albariño.

However, chardonnay is where the wine snobs get excited about

New Zealand, and this grape has been hailed by some – for many years – as New Zealand’s most successful white variety. This, of course, depends on your definition of success. It’s been six years since Jancis Robinson MW reported in The Financial Times about a blind tasting she attended in London between Kumeu River and top-flight white Burgundies. Her conclusion? The quality of the Burgundians was questionably haphazard while the bottles from New Zealand were pristine and faultless by comparison – and a fraction of the price to boot. Ouch. And while Kumeu River is still the country’s benchmark producer for world-class chardonnay, there are plenty of stunning alternatives to be had, such as Pyramid Valley in Canterbury or Neudorf in Nelson to name but a few, and all have a different take on the exciting blank canvas that chardonnay offers. The lion’s share of red-wine love in New Zealand goes to pinot noir – the most planted red grape in NZ soil, occupying 14 per cent of the total producing area. Galling though it must be to other regions across the world that battle on a daily basis to make pinot noir sing, this notoriously fussy grape seems to like the whole of New Zealand, from Central Otago to Martinborough and everywhere in between, Wairarapa, Nelson and Marlborough. Much like sauvingon blanc,

pinot noir has also adapted to survive here, evolving from weedy and pale or over-extracted and plump try-hard styles, to today’s bevvy of complex, bright and juicy yet refined styles that seem effortless in most cases.

And then there’s syrah, which is very much de rigueur in New Zealand, just like the rest of the world. While the North Island initially seized on it – Hawke’s Bay in particular – I tasted some fine examples from Waiheke Island when last there. World-famous

Marlborough has also got in on the act with some exquisite versions coming from the likes of Te Whare Ra and Fromm, the latter also making malbec these past 25 years for good measure. Could New Zealand’s restrained versions of these bigger, bolder, spicier reds be the next important chapter in the country’s wine evolution? Stranger things have happened. And if these past 12 months have taught us anything, surely it’s to say ‘never say never’.