You can find complexity in Cloudy Bay’s offerings

Cloudy Bay is one of the world’s most successful premium wine brands and it’s currently taking the Chinese market by storm. Founded by David Hohnen of Western Australia’s Cape Mentelle in 1985, the pioneering Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc put New Zealand on the map.

I remember being given a bottle back in 1987 and being mightily impressed by its pungent intensity. Soon it was almost impossible to get, rationed for good customers. I don’t think it was a deliberate ploy but it made Cloudy Bay one of the most famous wine names in the world.

From very small beginnings, Cloudy Bay — now part of the LVMH luxury goods group — is said today to produce 100,000 cases of wine every year. So it’s easy to get, still pretty dear and the Sauvignon

Blanc is very good if you like the passionfruit, tropical, elderflower end of the spectrum. Whatever floats your boat.

It doesn’t float mine. For me, your typical Kiwi Sauvignon is a caricature of the grape. Give me a good minerally Pouilly-Fumé and a few crottins of fresh goat’s cheese.

However, Cloudy Bay also make a Chardonnay and a Pinot Noir, far from cheap but certainly not among the dearest New Zealand examples. I fell in love with them again recently. These, I thought, are proper, grown-up wines with subtlety; instead of an assault on the senses, they reveal layers of complexity, wines that really do repay slow, contemplative drinking.

Jean-Guillaume Prats, son of Bruno, off-loaded Château Cos d’Estournel some years ago, and now looks after all the non-French wine interests of LVMH. Some years back he was taken to lunch by a UK wine merchant at Chez Bruce in Wandsworth, and was served, blind, the 2002 Felton Road Block 3 Pinot Noir from New Zealand. He guessed it was a top Burgundy, possibly a Richebourg.

So LVMH know what the country can do with this grape. Nobody served a top New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc blind will put it down as the cream of the Loire. The 2012 Block 3, incidentally, costs €110 from Cabot & Co in Westport. A Richebourg 2012 will cost you no less than €500 if you can find any.

Ely Wine Shop in Maynooth is now delivering nationwide and they have added even more stellar wines to their highly impressive repertoire. The recent arrivals are mainly from Spain, both the old classic regions and the newly emerging ones.