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<strong>WineNZ</strong><br />
<strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>/<strong>19</strong> $9.90<br />
Winemaker<br />
Caroline<br />
Frey<br />
talks horses<br />
and châteaux<br />
Our pick of the 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Sauvignon blancs<br />
Maserati Levante<br />
in Manila traffic<br />
Taking a Huchet<br />
home to France<br />
NZD $9.90<br />
Cellar door<br />
A vineyard with<br />
two elephants<br />
Travel time<br />
The takeaways<br />
from Thailand<br />
Food folly<br />
In praise of<br />
raw oysters
THE NED 20<strong>18</strong> PINOT ROSÉ<br />
TROPHY – BEST ROSÉ WINE – HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL<br />
WINE & SPIRIT COMPETITION 20<strong>18</strong><br />
GOLD MEDAL – HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL<br />
WINE & SPIRIT COMPETITION 20<strong>18</strong><br />
BLUE GOLD – SYDNEY INTERNATIONAL WINE COMPETITION 20<strong>19</strong><br />
GOLD MEDAL – SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL WINE COMPETITION 20<strong>18</strong><br />
PINOT ROSÉ<br />
2 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | Winter 20<strong>18</strong>
news & views<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
3
Get your<br />
wines ready...<br />
We’ll be tasting pinot noir, pinot gris<br />
and all types of dessert wines.
We will have a top line-up of wine tasters - and our usual high<br />
standards. <strong>WineNZ</strong> tastings are known for being independent and<br />
honest. They are not influenced by avarice and deliver highly regarded<br />
tasting notes.<br />
Our team will also taste new releases of all varieties on the same terms<br />
as for the main tasting varieties.<br />
Build your brand and burnish your image with <strong>WineNZ</strong>.<br />
Invitations to the autumn tastings will be sent to wineries shortly.<br />
PO Box 33 494, Barrington,<br />
Christchurch 8244<br />
03 329 9991<br />
admin@spincmedia.com
Publisher's note<br />
<strong>WineNZ</strong><br />
CONTRIBUTORS<br />
Daniel Honan, Charmian Smith,<br />
John Saker, Vic Williams,<br />
Martin Gillion<br />
PHOTOGRAPHY<br />
Kevin Judd, Richard Brimer<br />
DESIGN<br />
Spinc Media<br />
EDITORIAL<br />
Paul Taggart<br />
021 333 335<br />
Email: paul@spincmedia.com<br />
ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES<br />
Jax Hancock<br />
06 839 1705<br />
Email: advertising@spincmedia.com<br />
WEBSITE<br />
To subscribe to <strong>WineNZ</strong>, visit our website<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
ENQUIRIES<br />
admin@spincmedia.com<br />
PO Box 33494,<br />
Barrington,<br />
Christchurch 8244<br />
Wine samples: 884 Governor’s Bay Road,<br />
Rapaki, Lyttelton RD1, Christchurch 8971<br />
COVER PHOTO:<br />
Caroline Frey, winemaker for three major<br />
French wine estates. See Page 16.<br />
<strong>WineNZ</strong><br />
<strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>/<strong>19</strong> $9.90<br />
Winemaker<br />
Caroline<br />
Frey<br />
talks horses<br />
and châteaux<br />
Our pick of the 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Sauvignon blancs<br />
Maserati Levante<br />
in Manila traffic<br />
Taking a Huchet<br />
home to France<br />
NZD $9.90<br />
Cellar door<br />
A vineyard with<br />
two elephants<br />
Travel time<br />
The takeaways<br />
from Thailand<br />
Food folly<br />
In praise of<br />
raw oysters<br />
Family<br />
first<br />
<strong>Summer</strong> started slowly in<br />
much of the country, but<br />
by the time you pick up<br />
this magazine, hopefully<br />
the sun will have sprung in<br />
to action allowing the good<br />
people of Aotearoa to get to the beach,<br />
the bach or the back garden and away<br />
from the daily grind for a decent break.<br />
For the wine business, 20<strong>18</strong> wasn’t<br />
a flash year, both for wine itself (three<br />
ex-tropical cyclones swept through<br />
or close to the country in February<br />
and March) and for the industry (the<br />
increasing domination of mega wine<br />
companies at the expense of Kiwi-owned<br />
family businesses).<br />
One of the joys of the Kiwi summer<br />
break is that a bach or crib provides the<br />
perfect place to start thinking seriously<br />
about the upcoming year and what<br />
can be done to make the next twelve<br />
months better.<br />
It’s a fact that the highest number<br />
of people chuck in the towel to seek a<br />
new job over summer, following some<br />
quiet reflection after the turkey has been<br />
eaten and the kids’ broken Christmas<br />
presents have been taken to the dump.<br />
There’s not much that can be done<br />
about next year’s tropical cyclones –<br />
apart from hoping for the best, while<br />
planning for the worst.<br />
And apart from a socialist revolution<br />
– which don’t have a great track record –<br />
not a lot can be done about the on-going<br />
corporatisation and globalisation of<br />
our industry.<br />
We can, however, take heart from the<br />
fact that there are some great role models<br />
among our family wineries – including<br />
all the five-star winners in the various<br />
tasting sections in this issue. These are<br />
the folks who aren’t only thinking about<br />
their end-of-year balance sheet, but also<br />
about their legacy for their children and<br />
grandchildren, who will be running their<br />
businesses down the track.<br />
I think it is important that as wine<br />
lovers and consumers, we put our money<br />
where our mouth is when it comes to<br />
supporting the Kiwi-owned industry.<br />
We are all entitled to the occasional<br />
flirtation with an enticing foreigner,<br />
but when it comes to stocking the cellar<br />
or the fridge for the holidays, nothing<br />
makes me feel better than reaching for<br />
the sort of brands that put their heads<br />
above the parapet, strut their stuff in<br />
our tastings and receive an array of<br />
great compliments from our spectacular<br />
group of judges.<br />
They don’t have to be family wineries,<br />
but the values of these businesses, where<br />
the owners often planted the vines, toiled<br />
for decades before passing the baton<br />
to the next generation, are often<br />
the places iconic wine come from.<br />
While many of our readers are<br />
already committed enough to buy<br />
quality wines, rather than multinational<br />
rubbish from the bargain<br />
bin, maybe we should all take it upon<br />
ourselves this summer to spread the<br />
message – after all, Christmas<br />
is a time for family.<br />
Paul Taggart<br />
Editor & Publisher<br />
6 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
contents<br />
<strong>WineNZ</strong><br />
IN THIS ISSUE<br />
SUMMER 20<strong>18</strong>/<strong>19</strong><br />
50<br />
NEWS | FEATURES<br />
10 NEWS<br />
A drop in wine consumption in<br />
Western countries causes anxiety.<br />
12 NEW RELEASES<br />
A couple of gems from one of<br />
our favourite wineries - Clearview<br />
Estate in Te Awanga.<br />
16 A TOUGH JOB, BUT . . .<br />
John Saker nips off to France to<br />
talk to Caroline Frey about wine,<br />
horses and living a privileged life.<br />
50 PICTURE PERFECT<br />
Kevin Judd is both a photographer<br />
and winemaker. Paul Taggart talks<br />
to a man with two crafts.<br />
69 CELLAR DOOR<br />
There’s a winery in Thailand with<br />
two resident elephants. Paul<br />
Taggart drops in for lunch.<br />
PROPERTY<br />
63 WINE COUNTRY OPPORTUNITIES<br />
Wineries, vineyards and lifestyle<br />
homes now available for the<br />
discerning buyer.<br />
58 WINE PEOPLE’S PLACES<br />
Living the dream. A Central Otago<br />
lifestyle block that has it all.<br />
Charmian Smith takes a look.<br />
58<br />
VIEWS<br />
6 PUBLISHER’S NOTE<br />
It is time to spread the message<br />
about the benefits of drinking wine<br />
made by Kiwi family wineries.<br />
90 LAST WORD<br />
Vic Williams on the peculiar<br />
pleasure he gets from eating tripe<br />
and raw oysters.<br />
79<br />
8 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
FOOD<br />
74 RESTAURANT REVIEW<br />
Charmian Smith headed off<br />
to London to enjoy a meal and<br />
excellent wine matches at Noble<br />
Rot.<br />
79 WELL MATCHED<br />
After the bleakest of winters and<br />
a disappointing spring we deserve<br />
sunny times ahead says<br />
Vic Williams.<br />
82<br />
contents<br />
TRAVEL<br />
82 STATUES AND DENTISTS<br />
Paul Taggart visits Thailand<br />
in search of a decent glass of<br />
colombard and finds it in Hua Hin.<br />
MOTORING<br />
88 MASERATI IN TRAFFIC<br />
Dennis Valdes takes a Maserati<br />
Levante to the beach through the<br />
worst congestion in the world.<br />
88<br />
TASTINGS<br />
25 SAUVIGNON BLANC<br />
Who has the best 20<strong>18</strong> sauvignon<br />
blanc? You could say it is the king<br />
of wines.<br />
32 ALTERNATIVE SAUVIGNON<br />
BLANCS<br />
Oak, wild yeast – what’s that all<br />
about? And what’s happening<br />
outside of Marlborough?<br />
38 ROSÉ<br />
There is a big gap between the type<br />
of rosé the public is drinking and<br />
what wine judges think they should<br />
be drinking.<br />
44 SPARKLING WINE<br />
Bubbles are complicated, yet we<br />
have a handful of wineries that are<br />
making remarkably good examples.<br />
32<br />
74<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
9
The<br />
family<br />
way<br />
The Astrolabe family team: Simon, Jane, Libby (rear) and Arabella (front).<br />
Back in <strong>19</strong>96, acclaimed winemaker Simon<br />
Waghorn, eager for creative control, felt<br />
it was time to go his own way and, with<br />
the help of his wife, Jane, and two friends,<br />
started Astrolabe.<br />
Twenty-two years later, Astrolabe has evolved and<br />
is now officially a family business. Together with his<br />
wife, Jane, their youngest daughter, Arabella Waghorn,<br />
middle daughter Libby Levett and Libby’s husband,<br />
Peter, the Waghorn family has just completed the<br />
purchase of the company outright. Simon remains<br />
winemaker, Jane general manager and Arabella<br />
brand manager. Next year, Libby and Peter will join<br />
the family team.<br />
“When you create a business from scratch, it<br />
becomes intrinsically linked to your values, your<br />
daily life and family. Our girls have grown up in the<br />
wine industry. It is so exciting to have them stepping<br />
up and committing to our business. I am enormously<br />
proud to have a team of clever, hardworking, young<br />
women alongside me,” says Jane.<br />
Sophie McLernon will join the family management<br />
team in the role of sales manager for the APAC region.<br />
As Jane’s niece, she joins her cousins in leading the<br />
next generation.<br />
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10 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
news & views<br />
Wine Briefs<br />
Second win for Annabel<br />
Annabel Bulk from Felton Road is<br />
the Young Horticulturist of the Year<br />
20<strong>18</strong>. Annabel won the Bayer Young<br />
Viticulturist of the Year competition at<br />
the end of August, then went on to win<br />
the overall competition in November. She<br />
competed against five other finalists from<br />
other horticultural sectors - Landscaping<br />
NZ, Horticulture NZ, NZ Plant Producers,<br />
NZ Flower Growers and NZ Amenity<br />
Horticulture.<br />
Record set for auction<br />
The annual Hawke’s Bay Wine Auction,<br />
held at the Napier Conference Centre<br />
recently set another record, with $265,500<br />
raised for the Bay’s Cranford Hospice.<br />
Over 650 wine enthusiasts from across<br />
the country came together to bid for<br />
wine lots from many of Hawke’s Bay’s<br />
wineries, art work and a travel package.<br />
Warning labels mandatory<br />
Pregnancy warning labels on alcohol<br />
will become mandatory in New Zealand,<br />
Minister for Food Safety Damien<br />
O’Connor announced recently. The<br />
decision was made at the Australia New<br />
Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food<br />
Regulation in Adelaide. “While the<br />
alcohol industry has been voluntarily<br />
including warnings on some products for<br />
the past six years there is no consistency in<br />
the type, colour, size and design, reducing<br />
the effectiveness of the message,” Damien<br />
O’Connor said.<br />
Fresh team at Coal Pit<br />
Arnika Willner has been appointed<br />
as Winemaker at Coal Pit Wines in<br />
Gibbston, with Olly Masters appointed as<br />
Winemaking Consultant. Arnika, a Lincoln<br />
and Ohio State University graduate, was<br />
part of the Coal Pit winemaking team<br />
for the 20<strong>18</strong> vintage and has experience<br />
from Oregon, Australia, Germany, South<br />
Africa as well as New Zealand.<br />
Canterbury united<br />
Its been a long-time in the making,<br />
but Wines of Canterbury and Waipara<br />
Valley Wine Growers have finally merged<br />
to form North Cantrbury Wine Region.<br />
The new organisation, representing<br />
the interests of all Canterbury’s wine<br />
producers, had its first get-together in<br />
Christchurch in October. Catherine Keith,<br />
of Mount Brown Estates, is chair of the<br />
new association.<br />
Wine consumption<br />
drop causing angst<br />
There’s a new type of gloom both France and Italy had halved over the<br />
developing in some areas past 30 years. The tradition of factory and<br />
of the wine business, as a farm workers having a glass of wine with<br />
consequence of data showing lunch and dinner every day was fading.<br />
wine consumption in many first world Not only is wine consumption falling,<br />
countries is in decline.<br />
it has new alcoholic competitors, with<br />
The latest to raise a red flag was veteran both craft beer and the renewed enthusiast<br />
Kiwi wine writer Michael Cooper. for gin hitting wine sales.<br />
“In the UK, a key export market for Add to that a high proportion<br />
NZ wine, nearly 30 per cent of people of millennials eschewing the booze<br />
aged 16 to 25 now avoid all alcoholic altogether and wine has taken a battering.<br />
beverages, including wine,” Michael said. British pubs have taken a battering<br />
But the trend isn’t new. Last century too, with a quarter having called time<br />
– December <strong>19</strong>99 to be precise – The since 2001, a closure rate of 21 a week.<br />
Economist magazine reported that since That said, China has been a bright spot<br />
<strong>19</strong>82 the world’s consumption of wine for some exporters and those with trusted<br />
had fallen by a quarter.<br />
brands – and premium wine – tend to<br />
The explanation was simple. In the be fairing better in established markets.<br />
big producing and consuming countries And with five million glasses of New<br />
of Western Europe, regular wine Zealand wine consumed every day in<br />
consumption has become less and less the world, its not yet time to pull out<br />
of a daily habit. Wine consumption in the vines.<br />
Red winemakers in<br />
New Zealand gravitate<br />
to either Burgundian<br />
or Bordeaux varieties.<br />
Working for Tom<br />
McDonald propelled<br />
me in the Bordeaux<br />
direction. Tasting his<br />
straight cabernet<br />
sauvignons from the<br />
nineteen fifties and<br />
sixties won me over. In<br />
the early days, Hawke's<br />
Bay winemakers<br />
only had the mass<br />
selection clone to<br />
work with. Today there<br />
are numerous clones<br />
available. Brookfields<br />
started planting<br />
the LC10 clone ten<br />
years ago. It excels in<br />
gravels, so it is ideal<br />
for Ohiti Estate.<br />
Brookfields has<br />
released the 2017<br />
Ohiti Estate Cabernet<br />
Sauvignon and the<br />
2016 Gold Label<br />
Cabernet Merlot – both<br />
wines feature the LC10<br />
clone. It ripens earlier<br />
and exhibits excellent<br />
colour and generous<br />
fruit.<br />
Merry Xmas,<br />
Peter Robertson<br />
BROOKFIELD<br />
VINEYARDS<br />
Phone 06 834 4615<br />
www.brookfieldsvineyard.co.nz<br />
Trade Enquiries<br />
HANCOCKS<br />
Phone 0800 699 463<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
11
new releases<br />
Five-star<br />
by the sea<br />
Words by Paul Taggart<br />
This section is<br />
always a bit<br />
of fun as the<br />
genuine Kiwi<br />
new releases<br />
are usually<br />
supplemented with a few odd<br />
balls that have found their way<br />
into the <strong>WineNZ</strong> office. On this<br />
occasion the odd balls were<br />
from Thailand and Queensland.<br />
One of my favourite wineries<br />
in the land is Clearview Estate<br />
in Te Awanga. It pre-dates<br />
the “Napa comes to Hawke’s<br />
Bay” wineries and has a great<br />
restaurant which is the perfect<br />
place for a summer lunch with<br />
a bottle of chardonnay or rosé.<br />
It also has a great range of reds.<br />
Clearview’s current<br />
winemaker (Matt Kirby) and a<br />
former Clearview winemaker<br />
(Barry Riwai) were on our<br />
tasting panel on this occasion<br />
– but were unaware of whose<br />
wine they were tasting.<br />
The coastal climate at<br />
Clearview produces interesting<br />
wines, but it is more a result of<br />
good luck than good planning,<br />
as co-owner Tim Turvey picked<br />
the site back in the eighties as he<br />
was a keen surfer and wanted to<br />
be by the sea, rather than because<br />
of any deep and meaningful<br />
terroir considerations. But luck<br />
was on his side and the winery<br />
has prospered over the decades<br />
since, during which other winery<br />
businesses have arrived and<br />
disappeared.<br />
Clearview’s reputation means<br />
it can now sell its top chardonnay<br />
at $150 a bottle, but there are<br />
many wines at more affordable<br />
prices.<br />
For the new releases we had<br />
two entries and the first – their<br />
20<strong>18</strong> gewürztraminer – smacked<br />
the ball right out of the park,<br />
recording a five star rating.<br />
Even if Matt the winemaker’s<br />
score was discounted, and even if<br />
Barry the ex-winemaker’s score<br />
was also discounted, this wine<br />
was a five-star success.<br />
Clearview<br />
Estate Coastal<br />
Gewürztraminer<br />
20<strong>18</strong><br />
Simon Nash: Quite full<br />
lemon/lime, bright.<br />
Vanillin, honey or clover,<br />
soft ambrosia. Broad,<br />
plump fruit.<br />
Matt Kirby: Nice<br />
weight, well structured.<br />
Gewürztraminer. Lychee,<br />
Turkish delight and ginger.<br />
Barry Riwai: Turkish<br />
delight, broad richness to<br />
palate, glaceé ginger, spice<br />
and opulence.<br />
$22<br />
12<br />
<strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
new products | releases<br />
Clearview Estate Coastal<br />
Pinot Gris 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Simon Nash:Pale bright, greener/lime.<br />
Nice citrus, broad, juicy, lifted, clear,<br />
good, crisp, zesty and expressive.<br />
Matt Kirby: Red apple, pear. Nice weight.<br />
Good balance.<br />
Barry Riwai: White peach, apricot, higher<br />
alcohol, spritz, but not overly hot. Long,<br />
lime-flavoured finish.<br />
Second cab off the rank was Clearview<br />
Estate’s coastal pinot gris. This also<br />
tickled the judges’ fancy and was marked<br />
as a four star by the team.<br />
To find wines of this caliber we need<br />
to get away from the bargain bin at the<br />
supermarket and buy on a winery’s<br />
reputation and based on reputable<br />
reviews.<br />
These two Clearview wines are 5 and<br />
4 star – the pinot gris not being far off<br />
the top tier, yet they are not much more<br />
expensive than some of the rubbish<br />
being sold in supermarkets by the multinationals.<br />
It does make you wonder.<br />
$22<br />
One of the joys of being involved with <strong>WineNZ</strong><br />
magazine is travelling to unusual places to visit wineries<br />
and meet interesting wine people. For this issue I<br />
visited Monsoon Valley winery in Thailand and tried<br />
a range of their offerings. Having tried wines from<br />
similar climates in the past (Vietnam, India) I didn’t<br />
have high hopes, but Monsoon tries hard, as a 92<br />
point score for one of its wines from a well-know<br />
American wine critic indicates.<br />
I entered a couple of their wines in the rose class, but<br />
they failed to make it into the stars. However, the<br />
colombard entered here didn’t disgust the judges.<br />
Colombard is generally a cask wine in Australia and<br />
doesn’t have a reputation for setting the world alight<br />
in wine tastings. However, the judges saw some<br />
merit in it and on a good day, with a tail wind,<br />
it could have been close to three-star status.<br />
$60<br />
Monsoon Valley Buddhist Era<br />
2560 (2017)<br />
Colombard (wine of Thailand)<br />
Simon Nash: Bright, nice lemon/<br />
lime. Nice, quite creamy. Good acids,<br />
clean, fresh, jazzy fruit. Quite lean<br />
on finish.<br />
Matt Kirby: Big gruner style. Apple<br />
skin. Nice weight. Ash notes.<br />
Barry Riwai: Limey green, some<br />
creamy notes. Loads of freshness.<br />
Bright green peppercorn. Good carry.<br />
$A42<br />
Flaxmore pinot gris<br />
Flaxmore Moutere<br />
Pinot Gris 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Ballandean Estate Wines<br />
Durif 2016 Messing About,<br />
Granite Belt<br />
Simon Nash: Dark, quite dense,<br />
bright, quite concentrated, nice<br />
blackberry, soft, juicy, round,<br />
grippy, a tad drying. A bit hot, but<br />
promising.<br />
Matt Kirby: Super dark and<br />
concentrated. Massive tannin,<br />
almost closed. Raisin and rum. Full<br />
on.<br />
Barry Riwai: Inky dark. Blueberry/<br />
Mulberry on nose almost<br />
impenetrable. Mulberry, vanillin<br />
oak, very muscular wine. Sweet<br />
oak spice. Super concentrated, but<br />
not particularly revealing. Needs<br />
time to open.<br />
It was across the ditch for our next<br />
entrant, but not to the familiar wine<br />
regions of the Barossa, Hunter Valley<br />
or Margaret River. A Queensland red<br />
had caught the taste buds of one of our<br />
readers who brought a bottle back from<br />
his travels. The wine was a durif – known<br />
as petite syrah in some locations, particularly the US. This<br />
example was from the Granite Belt, a part of Queensland that<br />
claims to have a good climate for wine, but not many people<br />
outside the state take it all that seriously. That said, the judges<br />
were intrigued and, while they weren’t certain what it was, they<br />
gave it enough points for it to be a three-star wine.<br />
Isn’t that the beauty of wine – trying something new and not<br />
having any idea what to expect. The interesting aspects of the<br />
durif had our three experienced judges chattering away like<br />
schoolgirls.<br />
Another newly released 20<strong>18</strong> pinot gris was entered by<br />
Flaxmore, a winery owned by Moutere couple Stuart<br />
and Patricia Anderson. The pair have supplied their<br />
fruit to the nearby Neudorf winery for a number of<br />
years. While they continue to do so, they now also<br />
produce wine under their own label.<br />
The pinot gris submitted for this tasting didn’t score<br />
as highly as the Clearview entrant, but would have<br />
been comfortably three star, knocking on the door<br />
of four star status. A good effort.<br />
Simon Nash: Pale, bright, greentinged.<br />
Nice, quite bready, almost<br />
yeasty. Off-dry. With edgy fruit, good<br />
finish.<br />
Matt Kirby: Crunchy acid. Floral white<br />
flower. Aromatic, a little phenolic.<br />
Barry Riwai: Tutti frutti, orange<br />
blossom. A little flowery. Clean finish<br />
with drinkability.<br />
$24<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
13
A star is<br />
The accolades keep coming for Whistling Buoy’s pinot noir.<br />
★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★<br />
(and top wine of the show)<br />
JUNE 2017<br />
Wines of Canterbury awards<br />
FEBRUARY 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Wine Orbit<br />
MARCH 20<strong>18</strong><br />
<strong>WineNZ</strong><br />
This has an intense nose with good depth and elegantly concentrated aromas<br />
of dark-red berry fruit with subtle notes of blackberries entwined with dark<br />
herbs, unveiling violet florals, along with nuances of liquorice and nutty oak.<br />
- Raymond Chan<br />
Whistling Buoy<br />
Banks Peninsula,<br />
Canterbury, New Zealand<br />
www.whistlingbuoy.co.nz
orn<br />
See the Whistling Buoy website to purchase our wine directly, or to find your nearest retailer.
feature | the frey way<br />
FREY<br />
WAY<br />
THE<br />
Words by John Saker<br />
Lady of La Chapelle: Jaboulet winemaker Caroline Frey at the summit of the northern Rhône's famed Hermitage hill<br />
16 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
the frey way | feature<br />
They were putting on a<br />
brave face at Chateau La<br />
Lagune in Haut-Médoc.<br />
Yet the tomb-like quiet in<br />
the winery at harvest time<br />
all but bellowed the grim<br />
reality: the 20<strong>18</strong> vintage was a catastrophe.<br />
Two hail events were its undoing. The<br />
second, by far the worst, arrived on 15<br />
July, a half hour before the kickoff of the<br />
football World Cup final. In that game, you<br />
will remember, France squared off against<br />
Croatia. “Of course we won, but the game<br />
was spoiled for me by the destruction at<br />
La Lagune,” one estate employee told<br />
me. An unusual, swirling wind steered the<br />
hailstorm to a position directly over La<br />
Lagune vineyard, upon which it dumped<br />
its payload. Ninety percent of the crop was<br />
lost in just a few minutes.<br />
This was the main reason I would not<br />
be meeting Caroline Frey in Bordeaux.<br />
The woman who oversees the winemaking<br />
at three separate estates across three of<br />
France’s great wine regions (Chateau<br />
La Lagune in Bordeaux, Jaboulet in the<br />
northern Rhône and Chateau Corton C.<br />
in Burgundy) reasoned her time would<br />
be better spent at her empire’s other two<br />
dominions.<br />
We would cross paths at Tain-Hermitage<br />
in a couple of days. In the meantime, I<br />
would acquaint myself with La Lagune<br />
and in doing so pick up clues about Frey<br />
and her world.<br />
Chateau La Lagune’s Left Bank address<br />
is smart. It’s the first estate of significance<br />
you come to when you head north along the<br />
Route du Médoc from the city of Bordeaux.<br />
Chateau Margaux is just another five minute<br />
drive up the line. La Lagune’s third growth<br />
<strong>18</strong>55 classification has always belied the<br />
quality of its wines.<br />
La Lagune was bought by the Frey family<br />
in 2000. Swiss-born pater familias Jean<br />
Jacques Frey had established himself in<br />
Reims, Champagne, where he made a<br />
fortune in commercial real estate.<br />
Two things were behind Frey’s move<br />
into fine wine. One was a genuine love<br />
of the product, the other a desire to create<br />
something that would remain in the family<br />
for generations. Daughter Caroline (the<br />
eldest of three girls), having finished<br />
her studies in oenology in Bordeaux,<br />
was perfectly placed to give this vision<br />
immediate traction.<br />
She was just 26 when she took the reins<br />
at La Lagune in 2004. She knew what she<br />
wanted. Her approach is rooted in respect<br />
for the natural order of things. Belief in<br />
terroir means doing everything possible<br />
not to distort it, which means growing<br />
grapes organically, which in turn means<br />
preserving corners of the world for whoever<br />
comes next.<br />
Her greening of the estate has not been<br />
confined to vineyards (many of which are<br />
now moving from organic to biodynamic).<br />
The Frey family has sought (and been<br />
granted) official protection for natural<br />
wilderness areas they own that abut<br />
vineyards (even the woodlands around<br />
the winery itself). These are now places<br />
where wild floral and fauna thrive (no<br />
hunting allowed), and provide a foil to the<br />
rigid monoculture of a vineyard.<br />
As with many other organic/biodynamic<br />
wine growers, Caroline Frey believes<br />
embracing these methods will result in<br />
truer, more authentic wines. If truth is<br />
indeed beauty, the wine should also offer<br />
a great tasting experience.<br />
In between vineyard visits, a foray up into<br />
the Médoc and an exploration of Bordeaux’s<br />
Cité du Vin (a remarkable global wine<br />
museum which I highly recommend), I<br />
sat down to a Chateau La Lagune vertical<br />
tasting. It ran from 2009 to 2016 minus the<br />
2013, a tough vintage for which no classic<br />
blend or ‘grand vin’ was made.<br />
Two years before Caroline Frey became<br />
winemaker, British critic Andrew Jefford<br />
applied the descriptor ‘unchallenging claret’<br />
to La Lagune. ‘Anything but’ I thought to<br />
myself as I worked through the line-up. The<br />
wines had depth and distinctiveness; a bold,<br />
savoury thread running through them all.<br />
La Lagune unusually includes a high (up to<br />
10 per cent) petit verdot component, which<br />
gives the blend a dark, moody intensity.<br />
The standouts for me were the 2015 with<br />
its herbal whisper and harmonious tannins,<br />
and the 2010, aging beautifully, an amalgam<br />
of strength and beauty. The value these<br />
wines represent is worth mentioning too.<br />
The Freys have deliberately not jumped on<br />
board Bordeaux’s over-inflated price blimp.<br />
Chateau La Lagune sells for roughly 65<br />
euros (NZ$100) a bottle. The estate puts<br />
out two other lower tier red blends: Moulin<br />
de La Lagune (merlot dominant) and the<br />
fruit-forward Mademoiselle L.<br />
The word ‘chateau’ is a bordelais synonym<br />
for wine estate, hence its omnipresence on<br />
the region’s labels. Chateau La Lagune is<br />
an exception in that a stately pile is part of<br />
the package. This is both a family residence<br />
and a property available for hire (see ‘Your<br />
Chateau Awaits’). It was in the library of<br />
the chateau that I spied photos of Caroline<br />
in her younger days, some showing her in<br />
equestrienne mode. She was mad on horses<br />
as a young girl, I learned, riding and rising<br />
through the equestrian ranks to eventually<br />
compete for the French national junior team.<br />
I flew from Bordeaux to the Rhône;<br />
Caroline Frey does the same back and<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
17
feature | the frey way<br />
A catch in Corton: Chateau Corton<br />
in Burgundy is the latest<br />
Frey family acquisition<br />
<strong>18</strong> <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
forth many times every year, always by car.<br />
Within an hour or two of landing in Lyon,<br />
I was among vines, first in Côte Rotie, then<br />
Condrieu. Crazily terraced, hazardously<br />
steep, hard-won from the hillside with picks,<br />
shovels and strong backs, these northern<br />
Rhône vineyards provoke disbelief (and<br />
very sore muscles).<br />
Late that afternoon, I was back on the<br />
valley floor at Tain-Hermitage, the town<br />
at the heart of the northern Rhône. From<br />
the front door of Le Vineum, Jaboulet’s<br />
cellar door and restaurant in the Place<br />
du Taurobole, you are overlooked by the<br />
imposing Hermitage hillside, crowned with<br />
its legendary chapel. Inside Le Vineum, I<br />
at last met Caroline Frey.<br />
She has the presence of a horsewoman,<br />
I thought immediately. It’s a look I know,<br />
having grown up with horsey siblings and<br />
attending (reluctantly) more A&P shows<br />
than I care to remember. It’s not just her<br />
clothes (unflashy, dark tones, a jacket that<br />
could have been worn at a three day event).<br />
There is also a controlled calm, along with<br />
an alertness, that perhaps owe something to<br />
having learned how to communicate with<br />
an intelligence other than human.<br />
Frey no longer rides, she tells me. Her life<br />
is now given over to twin loves – a seven<br />
year old daughter and wine. The more she<br />
talks about the latter, the more you get a<br />
sense of how genuine her conscience is<br />
in regard to the business of making wine.<br />
I put it to her that overseeing three fine<br />
estates in three great regions is not your<br />
everyday gig. She is privileged. Does all<br />
that come with a degree of pressure?<br />
“The only pressure I feel is in my<br />
relationship with these places. We have a<br />
passion for ‘grand terroirs’ and with that<br />
there is heritage – the heritage of the earth<br />
and the stones beneath. These places are<br />
unique in the world, not just for their soils<br />
but also their energy. In our La Chapelle<br />
vineyards you sense a special energy. For me<br />
it is important that these places be preserved<br />
and worked ‘correctly’. That is a duty.”<br />
The next day I am taken to the top of the<br />
Hermitage hill. It is a beautiful, peaceful<br />
place. It has been doing what it does for<br />
over 2000 years and everything about it<br />
seems old and wise and sane. The small<br />
12th century chapel itself is owned by the<br />
Jaboulet estate and was recently restored<br />
by the Frey family – another dutiful act.<br />
We tasted through a Jaboulet selection,<br />
mostly 2016s. I fell in love with several<br />
wines well before I arrived at La Chapelle.<br />
The Domaine de Saint-Pierre Cornas<br />
2016, for example – an essay in structural<br />
elegance. And La Maison Bleue Hermitage<br />
2015: dense, generous and remarkably<br />
lengthy.<br />
Everything about the Jaboulet La Chapelle<br />
2016 is precise and contained. Young and<br />
tight, its pure dark fruit has a steely edge<br />
and the tannins are ample yet finely woven.<br />
It is all about beauty, not the beast.<br />
When the Frey family acquired an estate<br />
in Burgundy in 2014, another grande maison<br />
became theirs. Hard to miss, this stately<br />
chateau rises above the small town of<br />
Corton and dazzles with its richly tiled roof,<br />
the frey way | feature<br />
similar to that of the Hospices de Beaune.<br />
It’s early days for what has been<br />
rechristened Chateau Corton C. The estate’s<br />
conversion to organics has begun and a new<br />
winery was recently built. Production is<br />
currently small (30,000 bottles per vintage)<br />
but ambition is not in short supply… the<br />
Freys are on the lookout for more vineyards<br />
in Burgundy.<br />
Caroline Frey admitted to me her marriage<br />
to pinot noir has not yet been consummated,<br />
although “it will come”. However, some<br />
delightful wines are already being made.<br />
My five-day, three region swing ended with<br />
a tasting of the Chateau Corton C. range.<br />
Two pinots stood out – Aloxe Corton 1er<br />
Cru Les Paulands 2015 and Auxey-Duresses<br />
1er Cru Le Val 2015.<br />
The day before, Frey had said the empire<br />
could well keep expanding. Alsace. I<br />
enquired? She smiled and nodded, but<br />
intimated her next region of preference<br />
was Piedmont in Italy.<br />
What holds no interest is the New World.<br />
(“Too far. I would be a consultant, which<br />
is not what I want”.) She confessed to<br />
having tasted only a small number of New<br />
Zealand wines, all of them white, and was<br />
embarrassed at not being able to recall<br />
their names.<br />
Then I told her that the name of one of<br />
New Zealand’s finest syrahs, Trinity Hill<br />
Homage, was a salute to the late Gérard<br />
Jaboulet. Now that did interest her.<br />
Memo to Trinity Hill: you might want<br />
to send Caroline Frey a bottle.<br />
<strong>18</strong> th century elegance: Chateau La Lagune The barrel hall at Chateau La Lagune<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
<strong>19</strong>
feature | the frey way<br />
Caroline Frey was just 26 when she took over as<br />
winemaker at Chateau La Lagune in the Médoc.<br />
CAROLINE FREY ON…<br />
On her relationship with her<br />
father<br />
We are close, but above all we make a<br />
good team. I bring my knowledge of wine<br />
and vines; he has commercial acumen and<br />
looks after running the business. There<br />
are times when we don’t agree, but on the<br />
long-term vision and the big decisions we<br />
are on the same page.<br />
On what makes a wine ‘authentic’<br />
It starts in the vines. The vines must<br />
function properly, which means it must<br />
be the vines that feed and ripen the grapes,<br />
not only the sun and heat. That’s important.<br />
Following that, surmaturité (overripeness)<br />
is to be avoided – it is something for me<br />
that has the same taste in every region. The<br />
oak must be in perfect balance, because<br />
oak can fatten and detract from a wine. It’s<br />
the same with extraction. Finally, there is<br />
no place for faults such as brettanomyces.<br />
On great wine<br />
I always say a great wine is one about<br />
which there is nothing to say. There is<br />
nothing to say because the wine is more<br />
about sensation than words when we<br />
start saying a wine smells of raspberries,<br />
for me that’s not a great wine. We should<br />
dive inside it, in doing so dive into its<br />
universe, but for me there should be no<br />
need for words.<br />
On the parallels between riding<br />
horses and making wine<br />
It’s often said that a horse and rider<br />
must form a couple, there must be an<br />
understanding. Wine is similar. Every horse<br />
is different. A rider must adapt to different<br />
horses the way a vigneron must adapt to<br />
each parcel of vines. People have also said<br />
how difficult it must be to be a woman in<br />
the world of wine. Riding helped me in that<br />
regard because it’s the only sport that is<br />
mixed men and women compete against<br />
each other. It was a good apprenticeship.<br />
On the books she likes to read<br />
I always read a lot of books at once.<br />
At the moment I’m reading Krishnamurti<br />
(an Indian philosopher). There are links<br />
to Steiner and biodynamics in there. I’m<br />
always reading wine books one right now<br />
is by Jacky Rigaux and is about the taste of<br />
wine before phylloxera. Very interesting.<br />
I only read non-fiction never novels.<br />
20 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
the frey way | feature<br />
YOUR CHATEAU AWAITS<br />
I went down to the kitchen just<br />
after 4.30am on my last morning at<br />
Chateau La Lagune (I had a plane<br />
to catch). Stéphane the butler (he<br />
prefers the title ‘house manager’)<br />
was already there, immaculately<br />
groomed and done out in suit and<br />
tie. And he was baking… he was<br />
baking madeleines for me to have<br />
for breakfast.<br />
I was only expecting a cup of<br />
coffee, but above and beyond is<br />
how they roll at Chateau La Lagune.<br />
“Everything is possible,” Stéphane<br />
declares. I’m pleased to report that,<br />
for a very reasonable price, this<br />
attitude, the entire chateau and<br />
much more can be at your disposal<br />
for a day or several.<br />
The asking price is 700 euros<br />
(roughly NZ$1,<strong>18</strong>0) a night for<br />
two people all through the year.<br />
The rates charged by many<br />
New Zealand luxury lodges are<br />
roughly twice that, and La Lagune<br />
is every centimetre a five star<br />
establishment.<br />
Here’s what you get for your<br />
investment: a beautifully restored<br />
<strong>18</strong>th century chateau complete<br />
with living room, library, a fabulous<br />
terrace overlooking vines, full<br />
breakfast, personal unobtrusive<br />
service, a private chef (meals<br />
are extra) and a reservoir of local<br />
knowledge. There are three double<br />
bedrooms available in the chateau,<br />
making it the perfect option for<br />
a group of three couples to base<br />
themselves for an exploration of<br />
Bordeaux and the Médoc.<br />
To find out more, send enquiries to:<br />
s.morin@chateau-lalagune.com<br />
PS Stéphane’s madeleines were<br />
sensational.<br />
Bourguignon<br />
gives his<br />
thoughts on<br />
NZ wine<br />
“Stop following the kangaroos!”<br />
I was chatting to world-renowned soil<br />
scientist Claude Bourguignon in a bar<br />
during my visit to France. The well-travelled<br />
Bourguignon (he’s visited New Zealand<br />
several times), was volunteering his views<br />
on New Zealand wine.<br />
He had begun by saying we should tread<br />
our own, distinct path as opposed to looking<br />
across the ditch for guidance. New Zealand<br />
was not suited to cabernet sauvignon, he<br />
added firmly. I felt obliged to inform him<br />
that the Aussie influence has been receding<br />
The inner keep: interior views of Chateau La Lagune.<br />
for some time, as have cabernet plantings.<br />
He also opined that most Marlborough<br />
sauvignon blanc tasted of grape variety,<br />
not terroir.<br />
In his view, the varieties New Zealand<br />
should look at were those that originated in<br />
Savoie (France’s alpine wine region) and<br />
Switzerland. “Those places are young soils<br />
and a climate like that of New Zealand.”<br />
“Of all the southern hemisphere wine<br />
countries, I think New Zealand has the<br />
most potential.”<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
21
The summer issue tasting team. From left: Simon Nash MW, chairman of the panel of judges, Briar Davies EIT, associate judge, Barry Riwai, judge,<br />
Zhuoqun Liu (Ella), EIT degree student and associate judge, Tim Creagh, EIT, Professor Xue Yang a professor of the Qilu University of Technology<br />
who is a visiting scholar at EIT and associate judge for the tasting, Matt Kirby, judge, Paul Taggart, <strong>WineNZ</strong> magazine publisher.<br />
Tasting time<br />
Our top line-up of judges taste sauvignon blanc, rose and<br />
sparkling wines, writes Paul Taggart.<br />
Chairman of the panel was Simon Nash<br />
MW, a Cambridge graduate who spent<br />
three years trading commodities in the<br />
city of London before realising that wine<br />
was his true passion.<br />
He gained industry experience at<br />
Grants of St James’s, Hatch Mansfield<br />
and Private Liquor Brands. In <strong>19</strong>94,<br />
he passed his Master of Wine, and<br />
decided to travel the world, spending<br />
time in the Californian wine industry<br />
before fetching up in New Zealand and<br />
marrying a Kiwi winemaker.<br />
He is now a wine business consultant,<br />
based in Hawke’s Bay.<br />
We welcomed a new member on to the<br />
team for this tasting. Matt Kirby is an<br />
Australian who moved across the ditch<br />
in 2015 with his young family to take up<br />
the winemaking role at Clearview Estate<br />
in Hawke’s Bay.<br />
Before embarking on a career in wine<br />
Matt studied marine biology and he is<br />
also a qualified chef.<br />
He has worked in Australia, China,<br />
France (Burgundy), Austria, the United<br />
States and now New Zealand. He also<br />
has extensive judging experience.<br />
Barry Riwai is a product of the Eastern<br />
Institute of Technology.<br />
He worked at Ngatarawa Wines, Church<br />
Road Winery and in the Loire and<br />
Bordeaux. He was then winemaker at<br />
Clearview, back in Hawke’s Bay, before<br />
moving to Alpha Domus.<br />
Barry’s judging credentials are<br />
impressive, having judged at the<br />
Air New Zealand Wine Awards, the<br />
Royal Easter Wine Awards, Spiegelau<br />
International, Bragato and Australia’s<br />
leading event, the National Wine Show<br />
of Australia, Canberra.<br />
22 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
Centred in a region celebrated for the<br />
diversity and quality of its wine styles,<br />
EIT offers New Zealand’s widest range of<br />
viticulture and wine science programmes.<br />
Highly qualified lecturers with<br />
industry experience teach programmes<br />
that range from certificates through<br />
to diplomas, bachelor degrees and<br />
graduate diplomas, and encompass grape<br />
growing, winemaking, wine business and<br />
wine marketing.<br />
Our hosts<br />
EIT – a leading wine educator<br />
EIT’s strong connections with the<br />
local wine industry provide opportunities<br />
for students to gain practical hands-on<br />
experience working in wineries and<br />
vineyards in the area.<br />
Their learning environment also includes<br />
the institute’s purpose-built teaching and<br />
research winery which processes grapes<br />
donated by local growers and those<br />
harvested from EIT’s own vineyard at the<br />
heart of the viticulture and wine science<br />
complex.<br />
Programmes are designed to be flexible,<br />
providing a variety of study options —<br />
full- and part-time, February and July<br />
starts and on-campus and by distance online<br />
learning with compulsory residential schools<br />
held in Hawke’s Bay. The wide range of<br />
programmes enables graduates to progress<br />
to higher-level qualifications.<br />
The concurrent Bachelor of Viticulture<br />
and Bachelor of Wine Science is a unique<br />
opportunity to simultaneously study two<br />
degrees and graduate in 4½ years.<br />
How the wines are<br />
judged and awarded<br />
<strong>WineNZ</strong>’s tastings are run along<br />
stringent lines similar to those used<br />
by major wine competitions. All the<br />
wines are judged blind, grouped in<br />
flights by style or vintage. All the<br />
samples are served to judges in<br />
pre-poured glasses to ensure that<br />
there are no visual cues to suggest<br />
the identity of the wines so that all<br />
wines are assessed impartially.<br />
When a judge’s wines are entered,<br />
their marks are removed from the<br />
final average to avoid any conflict<br />
of interest.<br />
At the end of the judging, the<br />
top wines of each category are<br />
assessed blind for a second time.<br />
The judges then decide which will<br />
be awarded the highest accolade of<br />
“Top Wine”. The “Top Value” award<br />
goes to the highest scoring wine of<br />
$25 or under.<br />
Top Wine<br />
Top Value<br />
Best wine in<br />
category<br />
Highest scoring<br />
wine of $25<br />
or under<br />
5 Stars Outstanding<br />
4 Stars Very Good<br />
3 Stars Good everyday<br />
drinking<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
23
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WINE • FOOD • MOTORING • TRAVEL<br />
PM drops in<br />
Top-level backing<br />
for Central wine<br />
women<br />
Travel time<br />
Off to Russia – is<br />
that a good idea?<br />
How is the dark grape faring in Oz?<br />
How was it?<br />
An honest look at<br />
The 20<strong>18</strong> vintage<br />
Tasting team<br />
Chardonnay and<br />
blends under the<br />
microscope<br />
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sauvignon blanc | tastings<br />
Professor Xue Yang struts her stuff.<br />
Top sauvvies<br />
Words by Paul Taggart<br />
The New Zealand sauvignon blanc industry has divided<br />
into four strands in recent years.<br />
The first produces heavily<br />
cropped, bulk exported<br />
wine mainly for overseas<br />
supermarkets, the second<br />
generally makes better<br />
quality wine, which is<br />
bottled in New Zealand, the third produces<br />
aged premium wine. Finally we have<br />
sauvignon blanc produced in places other<br />
than Marlborough.<br />
Although this tasting is open to allcomers,<br />
thankfully the producers from<br />
the first category rarely enter. They may<br />
be too busy filling their bladders, making<br />
up fantasy Kiwi winery names to put on<br />
their labels or diluting their Marlborough<br />
wine with juice from elsewhere in a bid<br />
to hit UK supermarkets’ low price points.<br />
They also generally bottle off-shore and<br />
their products don’t make it back to<br />
New Zealand.<br />
The second group contains the bottles<br />
most wine people care about – produced by<br />
small and medium businesses which take<br />
an interest in cropping levels, sub-regions,<br />
their reputations and their customers. These<br />
are the wineries the Marlborough industry<br />
was built around before it was hijacked by<br />
overseas-owned mega companies.<br />
Number three – the producers of premium<br />
wines – is a tiny segment, and we’ll come<br />
back to them at the end of this tasting, as<br />
they deserve a sub-section of their own.<br />
This group may – or may not – provide a<br />
future direction for some in the industry.<br />
Finally – the non-Marlborough wines.<br />
Having staged quite a few sauvignon blanc<br />
tastings for this magazine, it is fairly clear<br />
to me that some Nelson wines can compete<br />
well against their neighbours – with a<br />
couple of Nelsonians again up among the<br />
Marlborough elite in this tasting.<br />
However, while we have had entrants from<br />
regions further away from Marlborough<br />
than Nelson – namely Hawke’s Bay,<br />
Waipara and Central Otago, they rarely<br />
make it on to the podium. It is not that<br />
they’re bad wines, just that they haven’t<br />
been sprinkled with the Marborough pixie<br />
dust. No pixie dust, no gold medals.<br />
So the first section of this series of<br />
tastings is the important one – probably<br />
our most important tasting of the year.<br />
The classification is sauvignon blancs<br />
from 20<strong>18</strong> – a year where producers had<br />
a few weather issues, but not enough for<br />
it to have a major impact on quality. We<br />
ended up with three five-star wines. The<br />
three businesses cocerned are all big and<br />
successful wineries, but are also all still<br />
family concerns.<br />
Top of the heap was Marisco, which is<br />
consistently among the leaders in these<br />
events, but this time came out of the taste<br />
off with the other two five-star wines as<br />
a clear winner. I great effort from one of<br />
our most consistent high-quality wineries.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
25
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MAGAZINE<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
$22.99<br />
The King’s Favour<br />
Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Simon Nash: Good colour, nice, lifted,<br />
quite perfumed. Bean pod, lime and<br />
lemon, perhaps grapefruit. Crisp<br />
acids and linear style. Good balance.<br />
Dry finish. I like it.<br />
Matt Kirby: Strong, pure aromatic.<br />
Underline peach and passionfruit.<br />
Lovely balance on palate with a very<br />
long finish. Mandarine.<br />
Barry Riwai: Nettles, thyme, hints of<br />
currant bud and crushed bramble. Very<br />
fine, delicate and savoury palate. Has<br />
tonnes of complexity and savouriness.<br />
26 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
sauvignon blanc | tastings<br />
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MAGAZINE<br />
$<strong>19</strong>.99<br />
$<strong>19</strong>.99<br />
Vidal Reserve Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Simon Nash: Slate, metal, stick<br />
character through to lemon. Quite<br />
racey on the palate. Wetstone. Dry.<br />
Matt Kirby: Saturating aromatic of ripe<br />
passionfruit, mango and lychee. Nice<br />
moreish acidity. Balance is good.<br />
Barry Riwai: Thiol, green Kiwifruit,<br />
curranty, leafy note that is very<br />
attractive. Great drive on the palate.<br />
Brambles, tropical. Lithe feel.<br />
Mt Riley Limited Release<br />
Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Simon Nash: Nice, fragrant nose.<br />
Complexing aromatic. Dry, quite<br />
mineral. Complex. Will open out.<br />
Good. Powerful. Linear.<br />
Matt Kirby: Salty, or maybe earlier<br />
pick. Pretty citrus blossom aromatic.<br />
Nice acidity. Not too intense.<br />
Barry Riwai: Currant leaf, hints of box<br />
hedge. Clean palate with drive and good<br />
focus of acidity. Lemon flavours on the<br />
finish.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
27
Recommended by<br />
SAUVIGNON BLANC<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
Esk Valley Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
$15.99<br />
Mt Riley Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Simon Nash: Lemon, lime, flint and<br />
mineral. Clean lemon, crisp acids.<br />
Linear.<br />
Matt Kirby: Elderflower. Quite a<br />
restrained wine.<br />
Simon Nash: Quite nice, austere and<br />
vanillin. Nicely handled fruit. Soft/<br />
complex, rounder style. Quite ripe.<br />
Will develop.<br />
Matt Kirby: Nice, restrained aromatic.<br />
Passionfruit and mango notes.<br />
Grapefruit. Nice balance, assertive<br />
acidity, but well balanced.<br />
Barry Riwai: Pink grapefruit,<br />
passionfruit and pineapple flavours from<br />
nose right through to finish. Fleshy,<br />
ripe style. Very attractive and easily<br />
drinkable.<br />
$<strong>19</strong>.99<br />
Barry Riwai: Bright lime zest. Super<br />
fresh, almost green peppercorn. Pure,<br />
pristine palate. Crystalline acidity,<br />
bright and fresh, just like it should be.<br />
Lemon and green melon.<br />
Leefield Station<br />
Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Simon Nash: Nice grapefruit nose.<br />
Quite juicy too. Nice, fleshy, but light<br />
style. Lime and citrus characters.<br />
$<strong>18</strong>.99<br />
Matt Kirby: Pretty, tropical longan/<br />
lychee. Palate is full and rich with good<br />
balance.<br />
Vidal Estate Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Barry Riwai: Cooler, nettles, lime zest,<br />
fennel. Good structure, carries through<br />
to a long, limey finish. Soft rather than<br />
zingy acidity.<br />
$15.99<br />
Simon Nash: A bit reduced, gunflint,<br />
mineral. Quite racey, lemony style.<br />
Wetstone.<br />
Matt Kirby: Very ripe, pungent<br />
aromatic. Passionfruit and lychee.<br />
Long palate with nice crunchy acidity.<br />
Slippery.<br />
Barry Riwai: Vibrant, thick, cape<br />
gooseberry, passionfruit, florality too.<br />
Has big palate as you’d expect from<br />
nose. Dry, broad, monsta of a wine.<br />
Babich Black Label<br />
Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Simon Nash: Nice bouquet.<br />
Grapefruit. Quite ripe. Good weight<br />
mid-palate. Lots of character. Nice<br />
mouth feel. Complex, long, very good.<br />
Matt Kirby: Honeysuckle botrytis note.<br />
Very ripe, tasty.<br />
Barry Riwai: Sweaty, nectarine, baked<br />
figs. Broad wine, good weight, softer<br />
acidity, ripeness.<br />
On<br />
Premise<br />
Only<br />
28 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
sauvignon blanc | tastings<br />
Recommended by<br />
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MAGAZINE<br />
Seifried Nelson<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
The Ned Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
$17<br />
Simon Nash: Quite full colour. Nice,<br />
quite intense nose, very good, lemon<br />
citrus. Nice mouth feel. Quite ripe<br />
mid-palate. Good lemon zest.<br />
Simon Nash: Fresh milk, passion fruit<br />
nose. Nice, ripe mid-plate, somewhat<br />
juicy. Good acids, nice grip and<br />
length. Perhaps tad soft on finish.<br />
$17.99<br />
Matt Kirby: Reduction dominates the<br />
aromatic. Some white flower notes.<br />
Palate has nice acidity, offering quite a<br />
structured feel.<br />
Barry Riwai: Tahitian lime, touch of<br />
cellary. Fine palate, very pure, just<br />
enough length.<br />
Matt Kirby: Green aromatic. Light,<br />
herbal.<br />
Barry Riwai: Cape gooseberry, lovely<br />
pineapple notes. Good carry, long<br />
passionfruity finish.<br />
Aotea by the Seifried<br />
family Nelson<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
$29<br />
Simon Nash: Quite a steely, racey<br />
style. Lime and citrus. Fresh dilute<br />
palate. Quite tight, good acids and<br />
concentration too. Good length.<br />
Matt Kirby: Heavy reduction somewhat<br />
dominates the aromatic. Very nice<br />
acidity/sugar balance. Long finish.<br />
Reduction holds it back.<br />
Barry Riwai: A touch of sweatiness<br />
slightly obscures the nose and gives a<br />
hard edge to the palate. Mango flavours.<br />
Babich Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Simon Nash: Broader, almost milky,<br />
nose. Round on the palate. Soft, nice<br />
weight. Passionfruit.<br />
Matt Kirby: Subtle aromatic, orange/<br />
lemon palate. Citrus and mango notes.<br />
Barry Riwai: Cellary salt, lemon<br />
lime, tighter, drying finish. Hints of<br />
minerality, slate and lime.<br />
$<strong>19</strong>.95<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
29
Recommended by<br />
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MAGAZINE<br />
Hello Sailor Sassy<br />
Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
$<strong>18</strong>.99 Simon Nash: A bit chalky, then<br />
armpit sweaty. Dry, good acids. Quite<br />
lean style.<br />
Matt Kirby: Very restrained aromatic.<br />
Orange zest, white flower. Nice balance,<br />
good summer wine.<br />
Barry Riwai: Citrus, zesty lemon<br />
and lime, blossom, gardenia. Good<br />
concentration, interesting structure.<br />
Classic Marlborough.<br />
Old Coach Road Nelson<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Simon Nash: Full colour, quite<br />
weighty, full spicy, cinnamon, sweaty.<br />
Nice spicy, zesty balance on the<br />
palate. Good citrus fruit, lively acids.<br />
Good long finish.<br />
Matt Kirby: Aromatic looks somewhat<br />
botrytis-affected. Palate is rich and full.<br />
Apricots and white pearl?<br />
Barry Riwai: Stonefruits, crunchy<br />
nectarine, white fleshed peach. Medium<br />
carry. Clean and correct.<br />
$13<br />
Zephyr Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
$22.99<br />
Simon Nash: Dry, crisp lemon, citrus<br />
zest. Good weight, quite dry style.<br />
Chalky, lacks mid-palate fullness and<br />
extra dimension.<br />
Matt Kirby: Slight reduction but<br />
works with style. Salty, tropical lychee<br />
aromatic. Lovely balance.<br />
Barry Riwai: Lime, green melon, some<br />
grapefruit too. Warming palate, full,<br />
broad, possibly losing some focus/line<br />
of acidity.<br />
Waimea Nelson<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Simon Nash: Chalky, mineral, quite<br />
dusty nose. Zest on the palate. Lime,<br />
dry, upfront, almost a tad spritzy.<br />
Quite short.<br />
Matt Kirby: Slight green aromatic,<br />
some lychee, passionfruit notes. Palate<br />
has good power, maybe slightly high<br />
residual sugar, but well played.<br />
Barry Riwai: Snow pea. Cooler, greener<br />
expression. Old school sauvignon blanc.<br />
Loads of bean sprout and capsicum;<br />
would work with the right food. Good<br />
concentration and length.<br />
$16.99<br />
30 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
sauvignon blanc | tastings<br />
Recommended by<br />
SAUVIGNON BLANC<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
Rongopai Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Awatere River by Louis<br />
Vavasour Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
$<strong>18</strong>.95<br />
Simon Nash: Nice lemon rind, quite<br />
good chalky mineral. Well-handled<br />
style. Attractive, nice, lemony, ripe<br />
character. Soft but in balance. Good<br />
finish.<br />
Matt Kirby: Some greener notes, pine<br />
forest, white pearl. Sugar is high.<br />
Barry Riwai: Tutti frutti, confectionary<br />
notes, mango. Full palate. Drops away<br />
a bit soon.<br />
Simon Nash: Powdery nose. Lemon.<br />
Quite soft on the palate.<br />
Matt Kirby: Pungent aromatic, tropical<br />
longan/lychee. Pleasant acidity and<br />
good balance. Well made.<br />
Barry Riwai: Cooler, cucumber, currants<br />
and seared limes. Green edge a bit<br />
too much. Needs more ripeness and<br />
concentration.<br />
$16.99<br />
Associate judge Elise Picot sporting the latest in Hawke’s Bay<br />
hair accessories.<br />
Babich Family Estates<br />
Marlborough Organic<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
$24.95<br />
Simon Nash: Full straw colour, quite<br />
heady, scented, vanilla pod. Soft on<br />
entry, quite juicy, tight though. Good<br />
acidity.<br />
Matt Kirby: Nice, elegant notes but<br />
some VA. Palate is tight and firm with<br />
some nice phenolic drive.<br />
Barry Riwai: Golden hue, peacy and<br />
orange blossom. Tending to drop away<br />
early.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
31
tastings | alternative sauvignon blancs<br />
Alternative sauvignon blanc time. Simon Nash, Barry Riwai and Briar Davies.<br />
The other<br />
sauvignon<br />
blancs<br />
Words by Paul Taggart<br />
A mildly vulgar, but oft-repeated observation about Marlborough sauvignon<br />
blanc, is that it is generally picked, poured and peed before Christmas.<br />
Which is great for<br />
cash flow: no<br />
months or years<br />
wasted with it<br />
sitting around in<br />
barrels – in fact,<br />
no expensive barrels required.<br />
But the simplicity that makes sauvignon<br />
blanc great, is also its achilles heel. Because<br />
it is relatively easy and quick to make,<br />
everyone’s doing it and the price has been<br />
sliding in recent years.<br />
Marlborough sauvignon blanc is still<br />
classed as a premium-priced product in<br />
some markets; however, premium means<br />
it fetches better prices than Australian’s<br />
nastiest bulk-exported shiraz, but it isn’t<br />
anywhere near Bordeaux type of premium.<br />
So some producers have come up with<br />
the idea that wild yeast fermentation, ageing<br />
in oak – or both – is potentially the way<br />
forward if sauvignon blanc is going to<br />
continue to develop and retain a premium<br />
reputation and the public’s interest.<br />
There are many great products that rest<br />
on their laurels, and, as a consequence,<br />
eventually fall by the wayside. The Nokia<br />
mobile phone springs to mind.<br />
With shiploads of sauvignon blanc<br />
heading north every year, Marlborough’s<br />
finest is a long way from where Nokia now<br />
finds itself, but there are concerns that a<br />
lack of innovation is beginning to take its<br />
toll on our sauvignon blanc’s reputation,<br />
especially in the UK. (we’re not talking<br />
bulk exporting innovation here, we’re<br />
talking wine innovation).<br />
In a recent debate in London, Richard<br />
Siddle, editor of Grapevine magazine, said<br />
New Zealand wines were the “Coldplay<br />
of the wine world” – meaning they were<br />
consistent, popular, but a little bit boring.<br />
The comment, made at New Zealand<br />
House in Haymarket, grabbed headlines<br />
and will, likely, do some damage. But the<br />
same sentiment has been expressed in<br />
different ways and by different people for<br />
a number of years. As with Nokia, which<br />
didn’t bother with new-fangled touch<br />
screens, as they were too busy selling 130<br />
million old-school handsets, sometimes<br />
it’s hard to imagine the music will stop.<br />
In Nokia’s case, Apple adopted touchscreen<br />
technology and the result was the<br />
Nokia juggernaut shuddered to a halt.<br />
32 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
What will be Marlborough sauvignon<br />
blanc’s Apple? Who knows, but it may<br />
already be out there somewhere.<br />
Or it could be in Marborough. A number<br />
of Kiwi wineries have been experimenting<br />
and it is possible that one may hit the<br />
jackpot. In a bid to encourage these folk,<br />
in our own tiny way, we introduced a<br />
second category for sauvignon blanc for<br />
the summer tasting. This was because it is<br />
difficult to compare aged or experimental<br />
wines against the range of 20<strong>18</strong> standard<br />
sauvignon blancs that will head offshore<br />
and earn the country a billion dollars.<br />
Even giving the wines in this new<br />
category a star rating is difficult, as some<br />
divided the judges much more than the<br />
standard sauvigon blanc ever could.<br />
When premium sauvignon blanc is<br />
discussed, Didier Dagueneau is usually<br />
mentioned.<br />
The Loire winemaker, who died in an<br />
ultra-light plane crash in 2008, was a<br />
perfectionist. His vineyards were extremely<br />
low yield and hand-picked in multiple<br />
passes.<br />
Many of his wines were intended for<br />
cellaring and he used oak, which is unusual<br />
for sauvignon blanc.<br />
His son Benjamin carries on his father’s<br />
work and the Dagueneau winery’s Silex<br />
wine (meaning “flint”) is still considered<br />
by some to be the pinnacle of sauvignon<br />
blanc production.<br />
For those who want to see what all the<br />
fuss is about, Dagueneau wines are available<br />
from some of the big wine retailers in New<br />
Zealand. I haven’t seen Silex for a while,<br />
but the other top-tier single vineyard, oaked<br />
wine – Pur Sang (meaning “thoroughbred”)<br />
is out there in the shops.<br />
So, Marlborough makes great picked,<br />
poured and peed before Christmas<br />
sauvignon blanc, we know Didier’s<br />
techniques for making premium SB, so<br />
we’re on to something, right?<br />
Cloudy Bay has been playing around in<br />
this area since <strong>19</strong>96 with their Te Koko.<br />
But after nearly 20 years – the wine was<br />
first released to the public in 2000 – it still<br />
only makes up about five per cent of their<br />
sauvignon blanc production.<br />
The wine is good – wild fermentation<br />
and aged in oak –and two years ago in<br />
this tasting it was judged to be five-star<br />
by the judges.<br />
That wine was made by senior winemaker<br />
Tim Heath, who has since shot through to<br />
take a job back in his native Australia. So<br />
I’ve no idea what the wine’s future is, or if<br />
a new broom will brush in a new direction.<br />
But what I do know is that the wine was<br />
dreamed up and first produced when the<br />
company’s founding winemaker, Kevin<br />
Judd, was still at the helm.<br />
Zhuoqun Liu gets in to her work<br />
And Kevin is still making spectacular<br />
premium sauvignon blanc, using wild yeast<br />
and old oak and he still enters competitions<br />
from time to time – usually when he’s<br />
confident enough to know he’ll probably<br />
win, if the judges are any good.<br />
He slipped his Greywacke Wild<br />
Sauvignon into our tasting and it was<br />
the standout in the “older and alternative<br />
section”.<br />
However, in some ways it was a fish<br />
out of water. As judge Barry Riwai said,<br />
it was hard to judge in the company it<br />
was keeping.<br />
He said it would have been more<br />
interesting if there had been more oakdriven<br />
examples to compare with.<br />
It has to be said, there were a couple of<br />
other barrel-fermented, non Marlborough<br />
sauvignon blancs entered in the tasting,<br />
but they didn’t make it into the star<br />
categories, even though they’re produced<br />
by two top wineries. I’m not sure what<br />
that proves – possibly that barrels are not<br />
the answer, or that it doesn’t matter what<br />
you do with sauvignon blanc if its not<br />
from Marlborough, it still won’t impress<br />
the judges.<br />
Barry added during the blind tasting that<br />
Wild Sauvignon was very Bordeaux-like.<br />
He noted meal and cedary oak. Some char<br />
too. It was a wine with a creamy, milky,<br />
yeasty palate, he concluded.<br />
When I sampled a glass after the<br />
tasting my first thought was chardonnay<br />
– presumably because of the oak. I’ll be<br />
interested to try it again over the holidays,<br />
up against a glass of Kevin’s five-star<br />
chardonnay, as well as against a good,<br />
unoaked 20<strong>18</strong> sauvignon blanc.<br />
Of the two sauvignon blancs he produces,<br />
Kevin prefers the Wild Sauvignon.<br />
“There’s not much fruitiness, as it has the<br />
influence of the wild yeasts, the malolactic<br />
alternative sauvignon blancs | tastings<br />
influence, the barrel influence – there’s a lot<br />
more going on. It ages far more gracefully<br />
than the classic style, he said.<br />
Of the other wines in the older/oaked/<br />
interesting section, Mission’s 2017 example<br />
performed very well. It would have been<br />
sitting high in the four star section if it had<br />
been in with the 20<strong>18</strong>s.<br />
However, this was a case of a traditional<br />
Marlborough sauvignon blanc from last<br />
year’s vintage showing its style, rather<br />
than it being a different type of sauvignon<br />
blanc, such as Wild Sauvignon or Te Koko.<br />
A great wine, though. I guess it shows the<br />
old lady of Hawke’s Bay can pick up her<br />
skirts and dance to a new Marlborough tune.<br />
While Mission may have a CEO from<br />
South Africa, a wine that pushed the<br />
Marlborough sauvignon blancs hard was<br />
actually from South Africa. Look out<br />
Marlborough, you may just have a serious<br />
rival. (See story on next page).<br />
Then we had sauvignon blanc in a can.<br />
The Savvy Society wine, entered by Archer<br />
McRae Beverages, was Marlborough fruit<br />
from 20<strong>18</strong>, so could have been in the first<br />
flight – but I guess the cans freaked out<br />
the stewards. However, it was tasted by the<br />
same tasting team and would have been<br />
sitting midfield in the three-star category<br />
if it had been in the earlier flight.<br />
The guys liked the wine, and while<br />
Barry Riwai picked it as not being from<br />
Marlborough, no one noted that it tasted of<br />
tin, or didn’t come from a bottle, so cans<br />
could have a future if the market demands<br />
it and the economics make sense.<br />
That might seem a bit freaky for those<br />
of us still mourning the corkscrew but, in<br />
the words of Bob Dylan, times they are<br />
a changin’.<br />
Matt Kirby warming to the task in hand.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
33
tastings | alternative sauvignon blancs<br />
A view to rival Marlborough? Spectacular hills as a backdrop and sauvignon blanc in the foreground.<br />
A South African of my<br />
acquaintance is a big fan of<br />
the republic’s wines – with<br />
him it’s all pinotage this and<br />
chenin blanc that.<br />
But he also says their<br />
sauvignon blanc is<br />
every bit as good as<br />
Marlborough’s. Sensing<br />
an opportunity to prove<br />
him absolutely wrong, I<br />
suggested he enter some of his country’s<br />
finest into our summer tasting and see how<br />
it shaped up.<br />
To give him his due he picked up the<br />
challenge and we set about sourcing some<br />
wine. And it was his lucky day. Because<br />
many Kiwis think that Marlborough<br />
sauvignon blanc is the only wine in the<br />
world worth buying, there was plenty of<br />
South African juice sitting round at discount<br />
prices. In fact, we picked up half a dozen<br />
assorted South African bottles for less than<br />
$10 a pop from an importer in Auckland.<br />
A downside was the wine was a couple<br />
of years old. While it probably wasn’t made<br />
with cellaring in mind, a year or two in the<br />
bottle hadn’t done the wine any harm at all.<br />
So how did it go? Two of the wines<br />
went straight down the chute, failing to<br />
make it into the star categories – but four<br />
scored rather well.<br />
Three had respectable three-star results.<br />
Sincerely (Neil Ellis, Stellenbosch) and<br />
Serengeti (Swartland Wines), both 2015<br />
All roads in the Western Cape seem to lead to a winery – and many are producing interesting sauvignon blancs.<br />
vintages. Also Diemersdal (Durbanville<br />
Valley), a 2016 vintage.<br />
But another of the wines put its hand up<br />
to be taken very seriously. It was a Graham<br />
Beck 2015 from the Game Reserve series.<br />
The winery is located in Robertson<br />
and was founded by the man the winery<br />
is named after. The late Graham Beck was<br />
a South African business magnate, stud<br />
farmer and philanthropist. He was one of<br />
the richest men in South Africa.<br />
The winery is best known for its sparkling<br />
wines, but also has a wide range of still<br />
offerings.<br />
The fruit for the sauvignon blanc comes<br />
from near the coast in the Western Cape. It<br />
is worth noting too that the Game Reserve<br />
isn’t the top tier of the winery’s sauvignon<br />
blanc range.<br />
It may have been like a zebra in a horse<br />
race, but it performed amazingly well. And<br />
keep in mind these four Africans were<br />
picked up for just under $10 each.<br />
Barry Riwai was keeping a lookout<br />
for foreigners and noted this as a non-<br />
Marlborough wine, but he also noted alfalfa<br />
sprouts and seaweed.<br />
Matt Kirby had smoky notes, umami<br />
and secondary mealy notes, while Simon<br />
Nash also had smoky, lemon, wet stone<br />
and seashell.<br />
This wine had something that made the<br />
boys perk up and have a good chin-wag.<br />
So maybe there is an African alternative<br />
to the standard sauvignon blanc that has<br />
served Marlborough so well for the past<br />
40 years – the equivalent of the iPhone<br />
that brought down Nokia?<br />
I guess we’ll need to wait a few<br />
decades to see whether Greywacke’s Wild<br />
Sauvignon style or Graham Beck’s smoky,<br />
Islay peat version develop into something<br />
that becomes a trend, or even becomes the<br />
next big sauvignon blanc thing.<br />
34 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
alternative sauvignon blancs | tastings<br />
Recommended by<br />
Alternative SB<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
$37.95<br />
Greywacke<br />
Marlborough<br />
Wild Sauvignon 2016<br />
Simon Nash: Full colour, nice,<br />
complex, yeasty, moody.<br />
Matt Kirby: Oaky, intense aromatic.<br />
Barry Riwai: Very Bordeaux-like.<br />
Meal, cedary oak. Some char too.<br />
Creamy, milky, yeasty palate. Would<br />
like to see more fruit. Hard to judge in<br />
this company. I wish there were more<br />
oak-driven examples to compare with.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
35
Recommended by<br />
ALTERNATIVE SB<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
$9.99<br />
(on special)<br />
$15.99<br />
Mission Estate Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 2017<br />
Simon Nash: Pale, almost spearmint.<br />
Dilute on palate. Good ripeness and<br />
weight. A balanced wine.<br />
Matt Kirby: Tropical notes. Nice<br />
development. Very good tension on<br />
palate. Lovely.<br />
Barry Riwai: Snowpea, green grass<br />
and raciness. Bright, herbal tones. Old<br />
school. Medium weight. Spearmint.<br />
Graham Beck<br />
The Game Reserve<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 2015<br />
Simon Nash: Quite mineral, almost<br />
smoky nose. Sound on the palate.<br />
Lemon, wet stone, seashell, mineral<br />
finish. Quite powerful.<br />
Matt Kirby: Ash and smoky notes. Nice<br />
umami recipe. Barrel fermented? Some<br />
secondary mealy notes. Nice.<br />
Barry Riwai: Alfalfa sprouts, moves<br />
through to an iodine seaweed note.<br />
Islay. Canned asparagus. Non-<br />
Marlborough.<br />
36 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
alternative sauvignon blancs | tastings<br />
Recommended by<br />
ALTERNATIVE SB<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
Sincerely<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Diemersdale South Africa<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 2016<br />
$9.99<br />
(on special)<br />
Simon Nash: Quite nice, lifted, lemonscented<br />
aromas. Soft mid-palate, easy<br />
drinking, not complex.<br />
Simon Nash: Bright varnish nose.<br />
Orange essence. Solid palate but quite<br />
hard. One-dimensional.<br />
$9.99<br />
(on special)<br />
Matt Kirby: Quite rich tar and ash notes.<br />
Showing development. Long. Biscotti<br />
notes.<br />
Matt Kirby: Quite developed, aromatic.<br />
Some leather notes. Palate is well<br />
balanced. Long finish.<br />
Barry Riwai: Positive reduction, sweet<br />
scent, frangipani, oak? Mealiness<br />
complexity. Good oily texture. Has<br />
length and focus.<br />
Barry Riwai: Pineapple, guava, red<br />
delicious apples. Phenolic grip gives<br />
structure. Gentle finish, weight and<br />
focus.<br />
$7.99<br />
Savvy Society Marlborough<br />
Sauvignon Blanc NV<br />
Simon Nash: Green-edged, nettle.<br />
Good on palate. Soft, juicy, nice<br />
lemon, juicy fruit. Good finish.<br />
Simonsig Sunbird<br />
South Africa<br />
Sauvignon Blanc 2015<br />
Simon Nash: Lemon, mineral, dry,<br />
quite hot on the finish through. Still<br />
sound and drinking well.<br />
$9.99<br />
(on special)<br />
Matt Kirby: Jasmine, vanilla, very<br />
pretty aromatic. Soft palate, easy<br />
drinking.<br />
Barry Riwai: Nougat, pink grapefruit,<br />
citrus blossom, mandarin. Mealy,<br />
yeastiness, interesting textural quality.<br />
Not Marlborough.<br />
Matt Kirby: Diesel, tar. Some honey<br />
oak. Palate has some residual sugar.<br />
Barry Riwai: Tropical fruits, green<br />
mango, rock melon. Medium carry and<br />
concentration.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
37
THE TWO ROSÉS<br />
Words by Paul Taggart<br />
There is a gap of epic proportions between the type of rosé wine the public is<br />
drinking and what winemakers and wine judges think they should be drinking.<br />
The point was clearly evident in this tasting.<br />
Is that an issue? Maybe, maybe<br />
not. I think it is an issue if judges<br />
are out of touch with general<br />
consumers and don’t realize that<br />
fact, as they’ll quickly become<br />
irrelevant, in the same way that<br />
corkscrews are now pretty much irrelevant.<br />
But if they are aware of the gap and can<br />
assess wine that is both technically correct<br />
for the variety, and also appreciate why the<br />
public enjoys and buys wine that may not<br />
be worthy of five stars in their eyes, then<br />
it isn’t a drama.<br />
One obvious reason consumers may buy<br />
wine that isn’t five star is price. Loyalty<br />
to variety, brand and even the motherland<br />
often goes out the window when there’s a<br />
sub-$10 Aussie in the bargain bin.<br />
But price isn’t so much of an issue with<br />
rosé, as much of it is reasonably low cost.<br />
However, the best wines in this tasting are<br />
knocking on the door of $30, so there are<br />
a few with some pretentions. Gone are the<br />
days when rosé was where bad red grapes<br />
went to die.<br />
One of the great things about rosé is that<br />
there isn’t the geographic snobbery that<br />
is associated with some other varieties,<br />
and good versions are made everywhere;<br />
just look at our wines that were awarded<br />
stars – we have a full hand, more or less:<br />
Central Otago, Marlborough, Hawke’s<br />
Bay, Nelson, Waipara and Matinborough.<br />
And showing the judges’ consistency,<br />
they picked two wines from the same<br />
winery as the five-star winners.<br />
What makes Wooing Tree so good? It<br />
is another family owned business (there<br />
is a theme developing with this tasting)<br />
and good Central Otago fruit. These two<br />
wines pressed all the buttons for our judges.<br />
Barry Riwai said they would both be<br />
excellent wines with food.<br />
Simon and Matt both picked the Wooing<br />
Tree Central Otago Rosé 20<strong>18</strong> as their<br />
top wine, while Barry went for Blondie.<br />
He said – and this is an accurate quote –<br />
“Drinking this wine with food, I would<br />
be on another plane. I would die and be<br />
in heaven”.<br />
There may be a certain amount of<br />
winemaker hyperbole in that statement,<br />
but it clearly makes a point. This wine<br />
needs to be on everyone’s table over the<br />
festive season.<br />
38 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
osé | tastings<br />
Recommended by<br />
ROSÉ<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
$27<br />
$28<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
Wooing Tree Central Otago<br />
Rosé 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Wooing Tree Central Otago<br />
Blondie 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Simon Nash: Nice, bright. Juicy<br />
strawberry, fresh. Strawberries and<br />
cream. Soft, good length.<br />
Matt Kirby: Strawberry and cream stye.<br />
Delicate apple note.<br />
Barry Riwai: Berry, raspberry twist,<br />
full bodied and textural. Well made,<br />
not overworked or washed out. Has<br />
structure, length, and a vibrant colour.<br />
Simon Nash: Very pale, almost pink<br />
water. Light, raspberry, leafy. Good<br />
berry grip, juicy.<br />
Matt Kirby: Delicate, aromatic.<br />
Raspberries. Palate is dry and wellbalanced.<br />
Nice.<br />
Barry Riwai: Almond-water white, wild<br />
strawberry. Fine, ethereal character.<br />
Well made, very correct. Some<br />
sweetness but with enough acidity and<br />
phenolic structure to balance. Surprising<br />
amount of flavour for something so<br />
pale.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
39
Recommended by<br />
ROSÉ<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
$<strong>19</strong>.99<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
$23<br />
Esk Valley Hawke’s Bay<br />
Rosé 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Simon Nash: Nice, lifted, vibrant.<br />
Lovely pink colour. Quite gentle, soft<br />
strawberry notes. Hearty with real<br />
grip. Good.<br />
Matt Kirby: Very restrained, leafy,<br />
strawberry aromatic. Palate is soft and<br />
sweet with rhubarb and spice notes.<br />
Barry Riwai: Pretty pink, watermelon<br />
and gala apples. Good carry of flavour<br />
and has phenolic structure that gives<br />
length and focus with a hint of berry<br />
sweetness.<br />
Black Barn Vineyards<br />
Hawke’s Bay<br />
Rosé 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Simon Nash: Bright pink but light.<br />
Cherry. Light, well balanced, leafy<br />
berry fruit. Good finish. Very correct.<br />
Matt Kirby: Nice cherry/rhubarb notes.<br />
Lifted palate of raspberry.<br />
Barry Riwai: Raspberry twist, long line<br />
of flavour. Chock block full of berry<br />
fruits and estery bubblegum flavours.<br />
40 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
osé | tastings<br />
Recommended by<br />
ROSÉ<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
Greystone Waipara<br />
Rosé 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Left Field Hawke’s Bay<br />
Rosé 20<strong>18</strong><br />
$28<br />
Simon Nash: Nice pink colour. A bit<br />
sweaty. Juicy. Just off-dry, good, soft,<br />
well-balanced.<br />
Matt Kirby: Strawberries and cream.<br />
Aromatic style. Nice acid, dry. Super.<br />
Barry Riwai: Watermelon, red apples,<br />
very vibrant berryfruits. Some sugar<br />
filling in mid-palate, but works well.<br />
Simon Nash: Nice colour. Drier style.<br />
Sweaty.<br />
Matt Kirby: Rosehip. Nice, ethereal.<br />
Good tension.<br />
Barry Riwai: Lean, dry, berryfruits<br />
abound. Dry finish. Maybe drops away<br />
a touch too soon. Complex.<br />
$17.99<br />
The Ned Marlborough<br />
Pinot Rosé 20<strong>18</strong><br />
$17.99<br />
Simon Nash: Orange pink, quite light.<br />
Nice berry character. Round, good<br />
style, sound fruit. Good finish.<br />
Matt Kirby: Almond meal aromatic.<br />
Rhubarb and vanilla. Palate has<br />
sweetness and length. Nice.<br />
Barry Riwai: Pale pink, berries and<br />
hints of blood orange, fine, dry with<br />
weight. Has structure and length.<br />
Domain Road Vineyard<br />
Bannockburn<br />
Pinot Noir Rosé 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Simon Nash: Nice pink bright colour.<br />
Attractive, winey. Soft, but leafy/<br />
berry. Good balance with grip and<br />
flavour. Berry, dryish.<br />
Matt Kirby: Strawberry and cream.<br />
Classic aromatic. Very clean and well<br />
done. Some sweetness balanced by good<br />
fruit intensity.<br />
Barry Riwai: Sweet spice aroma,<br />
vanilla. Soft acidity, rounded fruit, a<br />
sweetness to the mid-palate.<br />
$26<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
41
Recommended by<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
Whistling Buoy Canterbury<br />
Rosé 2016<br />
Mount Riley Marlborough<br />
The Bonnie Pinot Rosé 20<strong>18</strong><br />
$22.50<br />
Simon Nash: Onion skin. Light, quite<br />
reserved, orange, citrus. Dry.<br />
Matt Kirby: Persimmon, rhubarb. Light,<br />
dry.<br />
Barry Riwai: Peachy, bright raspberry<br />
acidity, bone dry and enjoyable. Very<br />
pale copper tone.<br />
Simon Nash: Nice colour. Attractive<br />
lipstick nose. Quite soft. Palate a bit<br />
dilute on the finish. Sound though.<br />
Good weight.<br />
Matt Kirby: Nice watermelon/<br />
strawberry note. Nice acid balance.<br />
Raspberry cream.<br />
Barry Riwai: Wild strawberry, raspberry<br />
too. Dry, lean, creamy finish. Interesting<br />
bramble, rosehip finish.<br />
$17.99<br />
Palliser Estate<br />
Martinborough<br />
Rosé 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Leefield Station<br />
Marlborough<br />
Pinot Rosé 20<strong>18</strong><br />
$25<br />
Simon Nash: Light onion skin. Nice<br />
nose, dry but savoury, with grip.<br />
Good acids, good concentration, good<br />
length and nice berry lightness.<br />
Matt Kirby: Strong strawberry note.<br />
Palate has nice tension with some<br />
sweetness.<br />
Barry Riwai: Very pale, pink smokers’<br />
lollies and confection. Soft acidity and<br />
sweet spice, needs more acidity to give<br />
structure and focus.<br />
Simon Nash: Nice colour, bright,<br />
lively pink. Baked strawberry pie,<br />
ripe, warm, off-dry. Quite good berry,<br />
but light style. Sound.<br />
Matt Kirby: Dusty raspberry. Quite<br />
concentrated on the palate with lychee<br />
and guava notes.<br />
Barry Riwai: Medium pink, smoker’s<br />
lollies, clove spice. Slightly distracting<br />
grippiness to the palate.<br />
$<strong>18</strong>.99<br />
42 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
osé | tastings<br />
ROSÉ<br />
Rabbit Ranch Central Otago<br />
Rosé 20<strong>18</strong><br />
Flaxmore Vineyards Moutere<br />
Rosé 20<strong>18</strong><br />
$23<br />
Simon Nash: Quite orange, looks a bit<br />
dull. A little dilute on the palate, lacks<br />
fruit grip. Sound, drying finish.<br />
Simon Nash: Very pale salmon. Shy<br />
nose, quite serious, though a trail of<br />
varnish.<br />
$21<br />
Matt Kirby: Apricot pie notes. Strong<br />
stonefruit and white peach. Palate is<br />
focused and fresh.<br />
Barry Riwai: Copper tones, red apple<br />
core, dried fruits and herbs, some partly<br />
oxidative notes.<br />
Matt Kirby: High-tone aromatic. Nice<br />
acidity, persistent finish.<br />
Barry Riwai: Palest pink, fine, dry and<br />
reasonably neutral. Good quenching<br />
drink on a hot day.<br />
Babich Marlborough<br />
Pinot Noir Rosé 20<strong>18</strong><br />
$<strong>19</strong>.95<br />
Simon Nash: Light, bright, light<br />
salmon pink. Off-dry, good length.<br />
Matt Kirby: Savoury mint notes. Some<br />
cold-cut meats. Phenolic grip on the<br />
palate with nice acid.<br />
Barry Riwai: Raspberry and pink<br />
grapefruit, hints of red guava too.<br />
Pleasing freshness to the finish. Good<br />
length and concentration.<br />
Hello Sailor Swanky<br />
Marlborough<br />
Pinot Noir Rosé 2017<br />
Simon Nash: Mid orange pink,<br />
bright. Nice, lifted pink. Some<br />
succulent characters. Juicy, orange<br />
pith. Dry. Solid.<br />
Matt Kirby: Stewed ? and spices. Some<br />
sweetness, needs acid.<br />
Barry Riwai: Strawberry, raspberry,<br />
still with focus and enough ?. Copper<br />
tanned.<br />
$<strong>18</strong>.99<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
43
Associate judge Michael Ledingham sniffs out a winner.<br />
SPARKLING WINE<br />
is a complicated market<br />
The French have done a<br />
marvellous job protecting<br />
the Champagne brand and<br />
retaining its exclusivity. So<br />
much so that Champagne<br />
is still the go-to beverage<br />
when it is time for a grown-up celebration.<br />
What about Prosecco, which has been<br />
selling like crazy in Europe and the UK<br />
in recent years? It is made with glera<br />
grapes, rather than the Champagne trio of<br />
chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier,<br />
and a less complicated production method<br />
enables the Italians to keep the price down.<br />
While it has had big sales success of<br />
late, it is swimming in a different pond to<br />
Words by Paul Taggart<br />
Californian and New Zealand methode traditionelle score<br />
very well in tastings and even educated palates would have a<br />
hard time judging them inferior to their French equivalents.<br />
And yet, the perceived prestige of Champagne continues.<br />
Champagne.<br />
And it is Champagne that the best of the<br />
Kiwi sparkling wines need to compete with,<br />
as ours are made by the more expensive<br />
methode traditionelle (which used to be<br />
called method champenoise before the<br />
French put a stop to it).<br />
But there are methode traditionelle wines<br />
from other parts of France and also Spain<br />
(Cava) which lower-budget wedding parties<br />
can turn to before considering going Kiwi.<br />
So how can we get some cut-through?<br />
It’s a good question and one our judges<br />
chewed over before sampling our small<br />
but excellent array of sparkling wine in<br />
the summer tasting.<br />
They were of the view that we produce<br />
decent examples of methode traditionelle.<br />
The winning wine proved the point,<br />
attracting comments such as yeasty, crusty<br />
bread, yellow apple, which is exactly what<br />
you expect for top-flight sparkling wine,<br />
whatever its origin.<br />
However, the combined view of the three<br />
experts – each with a different country of<br />
origin, although now full-time professionals<br />
in the New Zealand wine business – was<br />
that the industry as a whole could do better<br />
with sparkling if more effort went in to it,<br />
although there are pockets of excellence.<br />
The home market is very small for wine<br />
that is expensive to produce, and exporting<br />
is difficult because in overseas markets it<br />
is going up against Champagne.<br />
Which means – again because it is<br />
expensive to produce – making methode<br />
traditionelle in New Zealand is just too<br />
much effort for the return for all but a<br />
handful of determined people.<br />
And, said Matt Kirby, the prestige for<br />
Kiwi sparkling just isn’t there, however<br />
good it might be.<br />
It is similar to the situation with Chinese<br />
wine, he said. It doesn’t matter how good it<br />
is, people in China want to drink imported<br />
wine, as they see it as more prestigious.<br />
Then, for every great New Zealand<br />
methode traditionelle, there are several<br />
cheap sparklers made by quicker, easier<br />
methods. These wines further muddy the<br />
water and make the efforts to create an<br />
air of prestige around the sparkling label<br />
all the harder.<br />
But for all that, there is no getting away<br />
from the fact that the handful of wines<br />
that did make it in to the star ratings in<br />
our tasting are wonderful quality and a<br />
credit to their dedicated producers. And<br />
consumers can pick up some serious<br />
bargains by drinking local, and avoiding<br />
the premium prices Champagne continues<br />
to attract thanks to its ruthlessly efficient<br />
self-promotion.<br />
But if anyone can break out and make<br />
methode traditionelle a thing in New<br />
Zealand, it is the aptly named No 1 Family<br />
Estate, run by the Le Brun family, which<br />
took out the number one spot in our tasting.<br />
Daniel Le Brun has been making methode<br />
traditionelle in Marlborough for nearly 40<br />
years, after arriving from France, where<br />
his family had been involved with wine<br />
since 1684.<br />
No 1 Family Estate was the sixth family<br />
business to collect a top wine/five stars<br />
award in this series of tastings, which must<br />
say something for the need for long-term<br />
planning and dedication to quality that often<br />
comes from having a winery team consisting<br />
of husbands and wives, sons and daughters<br />
and the occasional grandparent too.<br />
44 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
sparkling wines | tastings<br />
Recommended by<br />
Sparkling wines<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
$96<br />
No.1 Reserve<br />
Marlborough<br />
NV<br />
Simon Nash: Full lemon colour. Quite<br />
full, bright though. Lemon zest,<br />
autolysis. Good lemon peel, dry, nice<br />
expression of fruit. Quite serious.<br />
Matt Kirby: Nice, austere aromatic.<br />
Nutty. Good, fresh and precise.<br />
Barry Riwai: Cream, green melon, good<br />
structure and mousse. Fine, dry finish.<br />
Savoury end, perfect apéro. Nutty<br />
dryness.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
45
Recommended by<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
Recommended by<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
$39<br />
Aotea by the Seifried<br />
family Nelson<br />
Méthode Traditionnelle NV<br />
Simon Nash: Full colour, some spritz.<br />
Quite heavy, bready, fine autolysis.<br />
Quite broad. Very dry. Phenolic grip.<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
$20<br />
Matt Kirby: Nice methode, strong<br />
mousse. Nice balancing. Good<br />
yeastiness and balance.<br />
Barry Riwai: Yeasty, marmite nose,<br />
bone dry palate, crusty bread, yellow<br />
apple. Very fine bead, perfectly dry<br />
balance. Love the yeastiness.<br />
Mission Estate Fête Hawke’s Bay<br />
Hand Harvested Cuvée NV<br />
Palliser Estate “The Griffin”<br />
Martinborough<br />
Methode Traditionnelle 2015<br />
Simon Nash: Nice, bright lemon, nice spritz. Zesty lemon<br />
citrus nose, juicy/fleshy. Solid grip, a bit phenolic, a slight<br />
drying finish.<br />
Matt Kirby: Nice autolysis, aromatic, ripe. Pear.<br />
Barry Riwai: Waxy, yellow apples. Some creamy notes, but<br />
with more fresh fruit/apple, rather than autolysis.<br />
$52<br />
Simon Nash: Nice lemon/lime glints.<br />
Good mousse, quite fine bead.<br />
Elegant. Lemon zest.<br />
Matt Kirby: Clear, crisp commercial<br />
style. Well balanced, well made.<br />
Barry Riwai: Pale colour with green<br />
hues. Apple-y nose, some peachiness<br />
(white peach), appealing mealyness.<br />
Good, dry finish and persistent bead.<br />
Tree-ripened Granny Smith.<br />
46 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
HAWKE’S BAY’S LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE<br />
THE 27TH ANNUAL HAWKE’S BAY<br />
Thank you<br />
Thanks to the generous support of everyone involved, this years auction<br />
was a roaring success. We raised the record total of $265,500.<br />
With the backing of our wonderful group of wineries and sponsors, all the<br />
money raised at auction goes directly to Cranford Hospice. Thank you all!<br />
hbwineauction<br />
@hawkesbaywineauction hawkesbaywineauction.co.nz<br />
LIVING<br />
Hawke’s Bay<br />
mardigras<br />
EVENT HIRE<br />
mardigras<br />
EVENT HIRE
OUR WATER
OTAKIRI 932 932
feature | kevin judd<br />
A winemaker’s<br />
other life<br />
Paul Taggart talks to Kevin Judd about<br />
photography, Greywacke’s growing<br />
success and his time at Cloudy Bay<br />
Kevin Judd and dog Dixie.<br />
With the benefit of<br />
hindsight, some<br />
careers and even<br />
the growth of<br />
whole industries<br />
can seem almost<br />
pre-determined. But the reality is often much<br />
different. Even the whole Marlborough<br />
sauvignon blanc success was largely a<br />
surprise to most in the industry in the<br />
first decade or so. Some wineries were<br />
still happily planting Müller-Thurgau in<br />
Marlborough in the eighties, thinking its<br />
high cropping would produce good wine<br />
profits.<br />
And with careers, for every person who<br />
knows from the age of five they want to be<br />
a doctor or a firefighter, there are a dozen<br />
who fall into a career, or have it decided for<br />
them by circumstances out of their control.<br />
With Kevin Judd, he’s always had two<br />
strings to his bow, and has been pragmatic<br />
enough to allow the changing winds of both<br />
industries — wine and photography — to<br />
dictate his path in life.<br />
Kevin was born in England, but when he<br />
was nine his family emigrated to Australia,<br />
and he went to school in Adelaide.<br />
At high school he was good at science,<br />
but didn’t want to make paint or work in<br />
a factory. He visited a few wineries in<br />
the Barossa, and winemaking sounded<br />
like an interesting job, so he enrolled at<br />
Roseworthy.<br />
“I wasn’t sure I had made the right<br />
decision after the first year; I felt out of<br />
my depth. I wasn’t much of a wine drinker<br />
when I started,” he said.<br />
Fortunately he stuck with it, and after a<br />
two-year stint at Chateau Reynella, before it<br />
was bought by the Hardys group, he came to<br />
New Zealand and worked at Selaks Wines.<br />
Then David Hohnen came along, Cloudy<br />
Bay was established, and the rest is history.<br />
But in parallel with his winemaking<br />
life, Kevin has always been a passionate<br />
photographer. His father was an amateur<br />
snapper and had his own darkroom, which<br />
could have been where the passion came<br />
from.<br />
While at Cloudy Bay, Kevin did a fair<br />
amount of photography.<br />
A visit to Marlborough by UK-based<br />
professional photographer Mick Rock in<br />
<strong>19</strong>90 encouraged Kevin to take his hobby<br />
more seriously.<br />
A lot of his photographic work after that<br />
involved supplying quality stock images to<br />
Mick’s Cephas Picture Library in London,<br />
which has thousands of Kevin’s photographs<br />
on file.<br />
He also produced two books featuring<br />
his photographs, and provided illustrations<br />
for a number of other publications.<br />
This is where it gets interesting — and<br />
where serendipity and the evolving power<br />
and influence of the internet took control<br />
of Kevin’s future.<br />
When he walked out the door of Cloudy<br />
Bay for the last time, plans were already<br />
in place for Greywacke, but Kevin was<br />
“<br />
I wasn’t sure I<br />
had made the<br />
right decision<br />
after the first<br />
year; I felt out<br />
of my depth.<br />
I wasn’t much<br />
of a wine drinker<br />
when I started.”<br />
50 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
kevin judd | feature<br />
The Quiraing, Trotternish Ridge, Isle of Skye.<br />
also keen to make more of a push into<br />
photography. It was a toss-up which path<br />
he would follow.<br />
However, the world was changing fast,<br />
and while good photographers could still<br />
make a living from shooting weddings<br />
and a handful from commission work,<br />
the backside was falling out of the stock<br />
picture business.<br />
As soon as big digital files could be<br />
sent by email, the business model was<br />
under threat. Mick Rock’s business used<br />
to employ six fulltime staff, but it is now<br />
back to being an owner-operator outfit.<br />
Kevin still sells prints, but the stock<br />
picture sales are now a small fraction of<br />
what they once were.<br />
A beneficiary of his photography talent,<br />
however, has been the Cancer Society, which<br />
has used his photographs on calendars<br />
and for other fundraising purposes, and<br />
has benefitted by more than $30,000 in<br />
the process.<br />
Books have also been marginal financial<br />
enterprises in recent years, so Kevin’s<br />
pragmatic decision to have Greywacke<br />
provide his income, while keeping<br />
photography largely as a hobby, was a<br />
sound one.<br />
For those who enjoy visiting new places,<br />
a massive benefit of running a successful<br />
wine business is the travel. Kevin and<br />
wife Kimberley spend months each year<br />
visiting importers and distributors, renewing<br />
contracts and dipping toes in to new markets.<br />
And every time they pack their bags,<br />
Kevin’s cameras go too. The day after I<br />
interviewed Kevin for this article, he left<br />
for Hong Kong, China and Japan and was<br />
already working on ideas for a fresh batch<br />
of images.<br />
And while the internet was responsible<br />
for the demise of the stock photography<br />
business, it has made a huge new audience<br />
aware of Kevin’s photographs, thanks to<br />
social media.<br />
The benefits of the Twitter/Facebook/<br />
Instagram exposure are difficult to quantify,<br />
but online photographs have certainly lifted<br />
the profile of Greywacke on social media,<br />
and increased interest in the brand, and<br />
have resulted in wine sales.<br />
Kevin’s stunning photograph of the<br />
Richmond Range, which was used as the<br />
base for the bottle label image, as well as<br />
his winemaking talent, helped Cloudy Bay<br />
rise from the early pack of Marlborough<br />
startups to be the most recognized New<br />
Zealand wine brand in the world.<br />
Now his photography and his winemaking<br />
and wine-selling talents are boosting<br />
Greywacke as a commercially successful<br />
wine business, known for producing<br />
interesting wines, such as Wild Sauvignon,<br />
but also wines that are technically excellent<br />
and delightful to sip on a summer’s evening.<br />
Castle Stalker, near Glen Coe, Scotland.<br />
Boathouse at Kilchoan, Scotland.<br />
Lightning, Mojave Desert, US.<br />
Atlantic Puffin, Borgarfjordur, Iceland.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
51
feature | kevin judd<br />
Frost at dawn, Brancott Valley, Marlborough.<br />
Sunset, Barbados.<br />
La Corbiere Lighthouse, Jersey.<br />
Cows, Dunvegan, Isle of Skye.<br />
Cook Island boy, Aitutaki.<br />
52 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
kevin judd | feature<br />
Rainy day at West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China.<br />
Travelling to promote<br />
Greywacke has given<br />
Kevin the opportunity<br />
to take stunning<br />
pictures in all corners of<br />
the world.<br />
Wawel Castle, Krakow, Poland.<br />
Young accordion players, Warsaw, Poland.<br />
Silver-studded blue butterfly, Cornwall.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
53
feature | kevin judd<br />
What really happened at<br />
Cloudy Bay<br />
Kevin Judd and his faithful dog Dixie.<br />
It has been a decade since Kevin Judd<br />
established Greywacke, but despite<br />
his new label’s 10 successful vintages<br />
and growth into more than 40 overseas<br />
markets, the conversation inevitably leads<br />
back to Cloudy Bay, the world’s best-known<br />
New Zealand wine brand.<br />
The Cloudy Bay story has been re-told<br />
so many times not many won’t have heard<br />
it, but for anyone who has been out of town<br />
since <strong>19</strong>84, an abridged version is on the<br />
opposite page.<br />
Also re-told in various publications has<br />
been the story of how Kevin left the business<br />
he had been a part of for 25 years and had<br />
helped grow in to a phenomenon.<br />
The general theme of past articles has<br />
been that on his 50th birthday, Kevin had<br />
an epiphany, left Cloudy Bay to reinvent<br />
himself as the owner of his own successful<br />
winery.<br />
In one version of the story, the epiphany<br />
happened on an aeroplane when he bumped<br />
into a former Cloudy Bay employee who<br />
extolled the virtue of self-employment.<br />
While these stories are all rooted in fact,<br />
the actual departure was less Biblical in<br />
nature, more the sort of experience many<br />
of us have after having worked for too long<br />
in a corporate environment.<br />
Kevin gave his all to Cloudy Bay for a<br />
quarter of a century, under David Hohnen<br />
and later Veuve Clicquot (part of luxury<br />
goods group LVMH), which bought<br />
Cloudy Bay from David and brother<br />
Mark Hohnen in several chunks from<br />
<strong>19</strong>90 through to 2003, when David<br />
sold his last block of shares.<br />
While a key element in the business’<br />
success and growth, Kevin had no<br />
equity in the company and was still,<br />
basically, a wages slave. But it was<br />
a job he loved and he saw himself<br />
being there for the long haul. However,<br />
the issues of working in a corporate<br />
environment, changing reporting lines<br />
and restructuring, which could have<br />
taken Kevin out of winemaking, did<br />
weigh on his mind until he finally<br />
decided it was time to make a move.<br />
Leaving winemaking behind for a<br />
corporate role within the LVMH empire<br />
may not have been the right step for a<br />
man who enjoys the peace of the vineyard<br />
and the barrel room.<br />
When asked a few years back whether<br />
he’d prefer to spend time with a group<br />
of winemakers or with a group of<br />
photographers, Kevin replied that he’d<br />
actually rather be in the company of his<br />
dog Dixie.<br />
He has been described as a man of few<br />
words. When hearing that description, one<br />
wine writer said that he thought “few” was<br />
being generous.<br />
So it wasn’t an epiphany that resulted<br />
in Kevin packing his sandwich box and<br />
flask — more an accumulation of factors<br />
largely outside his control which eventually<br />
made his decision inevitable.<br />
When Kevin walked out the gate in<br />
2009, he was armed with a mountain of<br />
experience, and while Cloudy Bay’s success<br />
was partly the result of “right time, right<br />
place”, something that couldn’t be repeated,<br />
there were other aspects of the success<br />
Kevin had learnt and subconsciously filed<br />
away for just such a rainy day.<br />
The Greywacke name had been registered<br />
by Kevin in <strong>19</strong>93, so the idea of having his<br />
own label had been with him for a while;<br />
it just took a round of corporate changes<br />
to give him the push he needed.<br />
Greywacke, which he runs with wife<br />
Kimberley, is an interesting model. It only<br />
has a tiny quantity of its own grapes, buying<br />
most from established growers. It uses<br />
the Dog Point winery premises to make<br />
its wine, and you won’t find the brand on<br />
supermarket shelves.<br />
These business decisions were the result<br />
of lessons learnt over years in the industry.<br />
Having millions of dollars tied up in land<br />
and buildings wasn’t the way to get a<br />
new startup quickly into the black, was<br />
Kevin’s logic.<br />
What you do need, however, is excellent<br />
winemaking. Some say a chimpanzee could<br />
make Marlborough sauvignon blanc, and in<br />
some years, and with some fruit, possibly<br />
they could.<br />
But Kevin’s meticulous, perfectionist<br />
traits mean he has made some spectacular<br />
wines from sub-standard fruit, even in<br />
his early days with Selaks Wines, near<br />
Auckland. It was one of the factors that<br />
had caught the attention of David Hohnen<br />
of Western Australia’s Cape Mentelle<br />
Vineyards, who founded Cloudy Bay.<br />
That said, another of the factors that put<br />
Cloudy Bay at the head of the pack during<br />
Kevin’s years, was an unwillingness to drop<br />
standards. If fruit wasn’t up to scratch for<br />
the Cloudy Bay brand it wasn’t used, and<br />
would end up in the bottles of other wineries<br />
with different quality expectations.<br />
Kevin retains that perfectionist approach<br />
at Greywacke, where he makes wine only<br />
with the best fruit available — some of<br />
it coming from his former Cloudy Bay<br />
colleague Ivan Sutherland’s family vineyard.<br />
These wines are very good. A fact that<br />
underlines the point is that Greywacke has<br />
entered just three <strong>WineNZ</strong> tastings.<br />
I don’t want to toot our own horn too<br />
loudly here, but the <strong>WineNZ</strong> tastings are<br />
not like the supermarket tastings or the wine<br />
industry tastings, and they certainly are not<br />
like the one-man-sitting-at-home-handingout-gold-stickers-willy-nilly<br />
tastings. The<br />
<strong>WineNZ</strong> tastings are professional, with<br />
high-quality, paid judges, with the aim<br />
of providing consumers with an honest<br />
assessment as to which wines are worth<br />
buying. The judges are not influenced by<br />
the reputations of entrants, as they don’t<br />
know who they are.<br />
In that environment — against a big<br />
54 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
kevin judd | feature<br />
lineup of top-quality entrants — Kevin’s<br />
first entry, a chardonnay in 2016, was<br />
judged five stars and top wine; then, in<br />
autumn of this year, his Marlborough pinot<br />
noir entrant was also five stars and top wine.<br />
The third wine entered was for the<br />
sauvignon blanc tasting in this issue — the<br />
results of which can be seen on page 33.<br />
So, three entries and a trifecta of brilliance.<br />
But for any wine industry person reading<br />
this magazine, they will know that it doesn’t<br />
matter how good a wine is; the key to<br />
success in this business is selling it.<br />
It is here that Kevin’s time at Cloudy<br />
Bay has clearly been a big help. His CV<br />
has opened doors in the export market,<br />
particularly in the UK, where his first<br />
vintage was bought by a distributor sight<br />
unseen, based solely on Kevin’s reputation.<br />
He now sells to a long list of countries<br />
in Europe, North America and Asia, and<br />
spends three months a year travelling to<br />
schmooze with his distributors. Dealing<br />
with a few dozen importers can be less<br />
time-consuming than dealing with hundreds<br />
of shops and supermarkers, but the strategy<br />
can have its downside, an example being<br />
that in some Nordic countries and Canada,<br />
which have state-run monopoly importers<br />
of alcoholic drinks, if a government penpusher<br />
has a change of heart over which<br />
sauvignon blanc he wants on his country’s<br />
shelves the following year, it can be a big<br />
kick in the guts for a Kiwi winery that had<br />
been planning on a repeat order to send<br />
tens of thousands of cases.<br />
Ninety-six per cent of Greywacke wine<br />
goes offshore, which is why the name<br />
doesn’t have a huge profile at home.<br />
However, despite Kevin’s protestations<br />
when he started Greywacke that he<br />
wanted to keep the business small, with<br />
no marketing manager and no HR manager,<br />
Greywacke is now classed as a mediumsized<br />
winery, in the same category as<br />
Cloudy Bay — albeit at different ends of<br />
the medium spectrum.<br />
It was a nervous time in the early<br />
Greywacke days. While Kevin’s reputation<br />
assisted the venture, it was the time of the<br />
world financial crisis, and finding importers<br />
for a new brand in many markets wasn’t a<br />
walk in the park.<br />
But it all came together over the course<br />
of a few nerve-racking years. Greywacke<br />
consistently delivers quality wines, and<br />
success was achieved without the need for<br />
corporate marketing BS. The payroll still<br />
only has half a dozen names on it, not all<br />
of them working full-time, and no HR or<br />
marketing manager.<br />
Greywacke has a unique, agile business<br />
model, which is perfect for this time, just<br />
as Cloudy Bay’s model was exactly what<br />
was needed for the <strong>19</strong>80s.<br />
A brief history<br />
Cloudy Bay was established in<br />
the eighties — a time when<br />
the government was paying<br />
grape growers $5000 an acre<br />
to pull out vines.<br />
West Australian winemaker David<br />
Hohnen was inspired by an early bottle<br />
of sauvignon blanc a Kiwi winemaker<br />
had given to him, and he arrived in New<br />
Zealand in <strong>19</strong>84, borrowed $1 million at<br />
23.5 per cent interest, hired Kevin Judd<br />
— then a 25-year-old winemaker with<br />
Selaks — and Cloudy Bay was born.<br />
David came up with the idea for the<br />
branding, and with his photographer’s hat<br />
on, Kevin shot a picture of the Richmond<br />
Range, which was converted into the<br />
iconic bottle label with the help of a<br />
graphic artist.<br />
Cloudy Bay wasn’t the first company<br />
to plant sauvignon blanc vines in<br />
Marlborough – Montana Wine Company’s<br />
Brancott vineyard was planted in<br />
<strong>19</strong>75, but Cloudy Bay was among the<br />
first five and, for reasons that aren’t<br />
completely clear, was the one that went<br />
on to be a stellar success, to the point<br />
that the words “Cloudy Bay” and “New<br />
Zealand sauvignon blanc” were virtually<br />
interchangeable in the UK during the<br />
heady years of the <strong>19</strong>90s.<br />
Champagne producer Veuve Clicquot<br />
bought a majority share in Cloudy Bay<br />
in<strong>19</strong>90, then mopped up Mark Hohnen’s<br />
final 10 per cent, then finally David<br />
Hohnen’s remaining 20 per cent in the<br />
early 2000s. In <strong>19</strong>87<br />
Veuve Cliquot had<br />
itself been bought<br />
by LVMH Moët<br />
Hennessy Louis<br />
Vuitton SE, the<br />
world’s largest luxury<br />
goods group).<br />
David is a clever<br />
man, says Kevin, and<br />
was prepared to take<br />
a risk at a time when<br />
the outcome was far<br />
from certain. The<br />
two are still in touch<br />
occasionally, with<br />
Kevin having recently<br />
sent a congratulatory<br />
email to David after he<br />
became a member of<br />
the Order of Australia<br />
for his services to<br />
the Australian wine<br />
industry and as a promoter of the Margaret<br />
River region.<br />
After the sale, David re-focused on his<br />
Australian businesses and Kevin stayed<br />
on at Cloudy Bay, seeing the company<br />
through its 25th vintage, before leaving<br />
in 2009 to establish Greywacke.<br />
LVHM has continued to invest in<br />
Cloudy Bay, adding several new wines<br />
to the range. In 2010 Te Wahi Pinot Noir<br />
was introduced, marking its expansion<br />
outside of Marlborough, as the fruit was<br />
sourced from Central Otago. In 2013<br />
and 2014, Cloudy Bay bought its own<br />
vineyards in Central Otago.<br />
While the sale of local wineries overseas<br />
often sees them change dramatically<br />
(Kim Crawford, Montana, to name but<br />
two), Cloudy Bay is at the better end of<br />
the spectrum of wineries with overseas<br />
owners. The winery is a member of the<br />
Appellation Marlborough Wine group,<br />
which is striving to maintain the quality<br />
reputation of Marlborough sauvignon<br />
blanc, and it maintains high retail prices<br />
at home and abroad, unlike some of the<br />
other big international businesses involved<br />
in the Marlborough wine trade which<br />
have been forcing wine prices ever lower<br />
with bulk (bladder) exports into foreign<br />
markets and importing cheap Australian<br />
sauvignon blanc for the New Zealand<br />
market, undercutting local producers.<br />
Cloudy Bay has an impressive cellar<br />
door in Marlborough, and recently opened<br />
The Cloudy Bay Shed in Central Otago.<br />
55<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz 55
Queenstown<br />
Vineyard Escape<br />
Boutique Vineyard Hotel, Cellar Door & Bistro<br />
Kinross is the exclusive cellar door for five award winning local wine producers:<br />
Coal Pit, Domaine Thomson, Hawkshead, Valli and Wild Irishman.<br />
Just 25 mins from Queenstown and 15 mins to beautiful Arrowtown, we’re in the centre of<br />
an incredible adventure playground. Explore the spectacular cycle trails before<br />
joining us for lunch and a tasting or stay the night in one of our gorgeous cottages.<br />
Book your Kinross escape by calling 0800 131 101<br />
or visit www.kinrosscottages.co.nz
Gibbston’s Kinross launches<br />
own label & Highland Clan<br />
<strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>19</strong> is set to be a stellar season in<br />
Gibbston with the launch of Kinross’ own wine<br />
label, along with their new subscription based<br />
wine club ‘The Highland Clan’.<br />
A world class wine region offering stunning<br />
landscapes and unique adventure, Gibbston has<br />
long been a star performer in the local wine<br />
industry. Kinross Cottages has operated as the<br />
exclusive cellar door for internationally acclaimed<br />
boutique wine producers Coal Pit, Domaine<br />
Thomson, Hawkshead, Valli and Wild Irishman<br />
for the past four years.<br />
Kinross’ first releases are a 20<strong>18</strong> ‘Holy Schist’<br />
Sauvignon Blanc, 2016 ‘Kilted Pioneer’ Pinot Noir<br />
and 20<strong>18</strong> ‘Liquid Gold’ Pinot Gris.<br />
The Kilted Pioneer Pinot has been named in<br />
tribute to the special legacy of Gibbston’s<br />
‘grandfather’ – and original landowner – Scotsman<br />
Thomas Kinross. Thomas arrived from Scotland<br />
in the <strong>18</strong>60s and together with wife Helen and<br />
their 11 children ran a thriving Trading Post, farm<br />
and gold agency on the land.<br />
Kinross owner Christine Erkkila is excited by the<br />
latest developments “We’ve built Kinross’<br />
reputation by representing five outstanding local<br />
wine makers, each offering something unique and<br />
special. Now to have our own label is a dream<br />
come true. With the launch of our Highland Clan<br />
Wine Club, wine lovers can take advantage of our<br />
partnerships with a select stable of independent<br />
winemakers crafting premium wines in one of the<br />
world’s top wine growing regions.”<br />
The Highland Clan is a quarterly subscription<br />
based wine delivery service where Kinross does<br />
all the hard work for you. Members receive<br />
shipments of three, six or twelve bottles each<br />
season, thoughtfully curated by Kinross from<br />
their wine partners Coal Pit, Domaine Thomson,<br />
Hawkshead, Kinross, Valli or Wild Irishman for<br />
you to enjoy and share with friends and family.<br />
Numerous benefits - including discounts up to<br />
15% on all your wine purchases, a free bottle of<br />
wine with your first order, complimentary tastings<br />
and exclusive online access to the Kinross Cellar<br />
of rare / hard to find wines - all add up to an<br />
alluring offer for wine lovers everywhere.<br />
Last minute gift dilemmas everywhere solved!<br />
For more information visit www.kinrosscottages.co.nz and click ‘Buy Wine’ from the top right corner.
feature | wine people’s places<br />
Two Central<br />
stunners<br />
It’s many people’s dream: a lifestyle block with vineyard,<br />
olive grove, orchard and vegetable gardens in a gorgeous<br />
part of New Zealand. Charmian Smith visits the<br />
Lawrence family at Aurum Wines in Central Otago.<br />
Above: Lucie and Brook’s villa is approached through a potager and sunny<br />
verandah. The northwest-facing wall is home to an espaliered fig tree.<br />
Top right: A sunny courtyard forms the entrance to Joan and Tony’s house.<br />
58 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
wine people’s places | feature<br />
On the outskirts of<br />
Cromwell, behind an<br />
olive grove and the<br />
historic cottage that<br />
is Aurum’s tasting<br />
room, are two very<br />
different houses: a historic villa moved<br />
from Queenstown and a modern, ecofriendly<br />
house.<br />
The former belongs to Lucie and Brook<br />
Lawrence and the latter to Joan and Tony<br />
Lawrence, Brook’s parents. They are<br />
idyllically situated, surrounded by gardens,<br />
olive grove, orchard and truffiere, behind<br />
which the terrace slopes down to Lake<br />
Dunstan. Their vineyard is across the lane<br />
down one side of the property.<br />
Lucie, Aurum’s winemaker, grew up<br />
in a winemaking family in France and<br />
always thought she’d live in an old house as<br />
people do there. However, when she came<br />
to New Zealand in 2004, she accepted that<br />
she would quite likely live in a new one<br />
as that’s what many people do in Central<br />
Otago, she said.<br />
In fact more than a decade ago, she and<br />
Brook were about to build a new house on<br />
the site when they saw an ad for a villa in<br />
Joan (left) and Lucie Lawrence.<br />
Queenstown free for removal.<br />
“It was meant to be. We were thrilled; we<br />
loved it, and it was going to be destroyed.<br />
It’s a lovely feeling that we’ve saved a part<br />
of New Zealand history. It works for our<br />
family just perfectly — it’s a perfect size,<br />
and cosy. We just love it,” she said.<br />
Built in <strong>19</strong>14 on the hill above the<br />
steamer wharf, it used to be the Grandview<br />
boarding house run by the Misses Powell.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
59
feature | wine people’s places<br />
❶<br />
❷<br />
❸<br />
The Lawrences have framed early photos<br />
of it and other memorabilia, which now<br />
hang in their passageway.<br />
It was still in its original state, complete<br />
with a black Shacklock coal range, which<br />
they’ve had refurbished by the original<br />
factory in Dunedin before it closed, Lucie<br />
said.<br />
The house has been thoroughly<br />
insulated and two of the original five<br />
bedrooms opened up to make a study and<br />
television room. The front door has been<br />
decommissioned and the hall space behind<br />
it turned into a wardrobe for Lucie and<br />
Brook’s bedroom.<br />
You enter the house from what was<br />
originally the back, a sunny verandah<br />
opening into a light-filled kitchen/living<br />
room. There’s a large kauri table at the<br />
kitchen end and comfortable chairs and a<br />
wood burner that heats the whole house<br />
at the other.<br />
“I know it’s small, but it’s well formed<br />
and it suits the way we live. We all live<br />
around the kitchen table; I wouldn’t live<br />
any other way anyway. Round the kitchen<br />
table — that’s how I grew up so it makes<br />
sense to me,” Lucie said.<br />
The house is filled with colour, each room<br />
different. Bright pastels for their daughters<br />
Mathilde’s and Madeleine’s bedrooms,<br />
deep blue for the master bedroom, a shade<br />
of melon for the television room, and a<br />
pale, refreshing green for the kitchen and<br />
living room.<br />
There’s a cosiness and a well-lived in<br />
feeling about Lucie’s soft furnishings and<br />
collections of books and objects in attractive<br />
arrangements — a Welsh dresser with a<br />
display of crockery, lamps and vases and<br />
other treasures, including a kimono on the<br />
wall in the television room, and paintings<br />
and photos everywhere.<br />
Across the lawn and down some steps<br />
flanked by garden beds are the clean lines<br />
of Joan and Tony’s creamy white Oamaru<br />
stone house built in 2015. Tony carved<br />
the year, MMXV, in a block above the<br />
arched window.<br />
At first the two houses appear totally<br />
different, but inside there’s a similar feeling:<br />
antique furniture, the arrangements of<br />
objects — charming vignettes that catch<br />
the eye — a bowl of orange gourds on a<br />
low bookcase alongside a vase of yellow<br />
lilies with a painting above, a bust on a<br />
table covered by a kilim, exotic pottery,<br />
and books and paintings everywhere.<br />
Joan explains, “I think our houses are<br />
quite similar. We have the same tastes,<br />
Lucie and I — bright colours. We like the<br />
same things.”<br />
❻<br />
❼<br />
❹<br />
❺<br />
❽<br />
❶ An early photo of the villa’s former life as a Queenstown boardinghouse. ❷ The kitchen table, the centre of family living. ❸ Deep blue walls in Lucie and<br />
Brook’s bedroom. ❹ Attractive vignettes that catch the eye are everywhere. ❺ MMXV, the year the house was built, carved by Tony. ❻ The television room is<br />
filled with colour and soft furnishings. ❼ Crockery displayed on the Welsh dresser in the kitchen-living area. ❽ Some of Joan’s crockery collection and walnuts<br />
from their tree, under the central kitchen bench. ❾ Good taste is everywhere. ❿ The sitting area with the recycled full length arched window.<br />
60 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
wine people’s places | feature<br />
Lucie adds: “A lot of my things are her<br />
things though — things she’s collected<br />
over the years. We don’t like clutter, but<br />
we don’t like minimalism. You don’t need<br />
millions of objects; each object has a feel<br />
to it and adds a lot of texture to a room.”<br />
The central room in Joan and Tony’s<br />
house is the large living room with kitchen<br />
at one end, a long table in the centre<br />
and comfortable sofas at the other, with<br />
bookshelves either side the full length,<br />
arched window in the end wall.<br />
The tables and kitchen fittings are made<br />
from joinery recycled from Wigram airbase<br />
near Christchurch, and the house’s striking<br />
black-framed steel windows came from a<br />
retirement home in Alexandra and have<br />
been restored and double glazed.<br />
Beyond the living room is a short passage<br />
with bathroom and toilet off, leading to the<br />
master bedroom, another book-filled room.<br />
On the other side of the entrance lobby<br />
is what Joan calls the “woofer’s wing”,<br />
consisting of two bedrooms, bathroom<br />
and a small kitchen-living area that opens<br />
onto the entrance courtyard. During the<br />
six-month season, woofers — willing<br />
workers on organic farms — stay there<br />
separate from the main house, although<br />
they eat together, Joan says.<br />
The house is heated by a ground source<br />
heat exchanger, taking warmth from deep<br />
in the ground outside, concentrating it,<br />
heating water and circulating it through<br />
the polished concrete floors. In summer<br />
it cools the house. It’s cheap to run, each<br />
room can be set to different temperatures<br />
and plenty of insulation means it’s “an<br />
unbelievably warm house — just gorgeous<br />
all the time”, she says.<br />
The house has two courtyards: a sunny<br />
one with a pergola through which you<br />
enter the house, but on the other side of the<br />
living room alongside the small passage is<br />
an east-facing one. It’s the cool courtyard,<br />
essential in Central Otago summers, she<br />
explains.<br />
In fact, Joan and Tony lived in Lucie<br />
and Brook’s house for <strong>18</strong> months while<br />
they designed and built their new house.<br />
“It was so they could work out the sun<br />
and wind and what views they wanted,<br />
and they loved the view to the south.<br />
They weren’t going to put a window to the<br />
south because of the cold, but [the view’s]<br />
just lovely,” Lucie said.<br />
The Lawrences bought the land in 2001<br />
and sold some of it for subdivision for the<br />
burgeoning town. It’s too expensive for<br />
vineyard land now, Joan says.<br />
Nevertheless their 4ha vineyard is across<br />
the lane and they are now developing<br />
another 4ha on a hillside across the main<br />
road. In front of the houses are the tasting<br />
room and the winery surrounded by the<br />
A lot of my things are her things though — things<br />
she’s collected over the years. We don’t like<br />
clutter, but we don’t like minimalism. You don’t need<br />
millions of objects; each object has a feel to it and adds a<br />
lot of texture to a room.”<br />
❾<br />
❿<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
61
feature | wine people’s places<br />
The parterre behind the house is filling out.<br />
olive grove. Behind them are an orchard<br />
and a truffiere, then the terrace slopes down<br />
to the Lake Dunstan reserve, making for<br />
easy access for Mathilde and Madeleine<br />
to swim and boat.<br />
Joan, an archaeologist, has found a lot of<br />
relics on the site, from spoons and knives<br />
to ploughs and other farm tools.<br />
“The first owner of this property was a<br />
Chinese gold miner so we have found lots<br />
of bits of Chinese pickle pots and things,<br />
evidence of Ah Que. And I’m quite excited<br />
about the fact he was here because he started<br />
a market garden in <strong>18</strong>80 so it’s had a long<br />
process of people growing things here.”<br />
After Ah Que’s death in <strong>19</strong>04, the<br />
Stephens family farmed in the area, so<br />
the Lawrences are only the third owners<br />
after they broke up the big sheep farms,<br />
she said.<br />
The Lawrences grow most of their own<br />
vegetables in the potager behind Lucie and<br />
Brook’s house, and they keep chickens.<br />
Against the sunny house wall is an 11-year<br />
old espaliered fig that ripens several weeks<br />
before the freestanding tree, Lucie says.<br />
One of the garden features at the Lawrences’ home.<br />
But the grounds are not all about selfsufficiency.<br />
Joan says she always wanted a<br />
parterre and decided that if she didn’t plant<br />
one now she would never have one, so the<br />
neat pattern of box hedges interspersed with<br />
white gravel is filling out on the southwest<br />
side of the house.<br />
Behind the tasting room is an enormous<br />
old walnut tree and Joan has planted old<br />
fashioned roses and perennials as well as<br />
spring bulbs round the restored cottage.<br />
“It’s a good life,” she says.<br />
The first owner of<br />
this property was a<br />
Chinese gold miner<br />
so we have found lots of bits<br />
of Chinese pickle pots and<br />
things, evidence of Ah Que.”<br />
62 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
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huchet goes home | column<br />
Hunting for<br />
a Huchet<br />
Words and pictures by John Saker<br />
Jérémie Huchet with his<br />
bottle of Mission Estate<br />
Huchet Syrah.<br />
It began as one of those slow Friday afternoon Google goof-offs. I was entering the names of<br />
people who had been in my orbit decades ago – the boy that lived across the road from us in<br />
London in <strong>19</strong>60, the third form English teacher with the cool paisley shirts, the girl I ached to<br />
see on the bus every morning when I was 12.<br />
How about doing some research that might be useful, I scolded myself.<br />
So I typed in the name ‘Huchet’.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
67
column | huchet goes home<br />
wine people’s places | feature<br />
Cyprien Huchet was a Marist Brother and the<br />
first winemaker in New Zealand who actually<br />
knew what he was doing. He arrived in Hawke’s<br />
Bay in <strong>18</strong>71 and set about transforming what is<br />
now Mission Estate, our oldest winery. Under his<br />
watch, Mission became the first wine operation in<br />
the country to sell wine to the public and the first<br />
to plant pinot noir and pinot gris.<br />
Like all those first ‘Frères Maristes’, Huchet<br />
was French. He was born into a winegrowing<br />
family near Nantes in the Loire, which accounted<br />
for the know-how and skill he brought to his work<br />
in Hawke’s Bay.<br />
My search quickly revealed that Huchet is a fairly<br />
common name in the north of France, and some<br />
nearby places. The last man to be hanged on the<br />
Channel Islands (in <strong>19</strong>59) was a Huchet. Who knew?<br />
So I refined the search to ‘Huchet wine’. That<br />
threw up references to the top syrah produced by<br />
winemaker Paul Mooney and his team at Mission<br />
Estate, a wine they have named in honour of their<br />
pioneering vigneron français.<br />
But there, halfway down the page, I saw what I’d<br />
been hoping to find. It was the website of a Loire<br />
Valley wine estate, very close to Nantes, that carried<br />
the name Huchet.<br />
In Europe, wine estates have the habit of being<br />
passed from one generation to the next, down through<br />
the centuries. Could this be the same estate that was<br />
home to our first serious winemaker before he became<br />
a man of faith and emigrated to the south seas?<br />
I immediately sent the estate an email, introducing<br />
myself, supplying the Brother Cyprien story and<br />
asking if there might be a familial link.<br />
The following day Jérémie Huchet, the current<br />
owner and winemaker responded. He attached a<br />
document that supplied his direct Huchet line going<br />
back to the 17th century. No sign of a Cyprien, but<br />
that wasn’t surprising. For one thing the Marists<br />
changed their names when they entered the order.<br />
For another Cyprien probably would have been a<br />
younger brother and this direct line representation<br />
(in effect, a family tree that was all trunk and no<br />
laterals) didn’t include the names of the siblings of<br />
each generation.<br />
Jérémie Huchet said he was very pleased to have<br />
been contacted and promised to dig further. And if<br />
I was ever in the Loire<br />
Which I was, just a few weeks ago.<br />
One morning, from my base in Chinon, I struck<br />
out in the rental for Chateau-Thébaud, the small town<br />
just beyond the southern outskirts of Nantes that is<br />
home to Jérémie Huchet, Vigneron en Muscadet.<br />
Beside me in the car was a bottle of Mission Estate<br />
Huchet Syrah, an Antipodean offering kindly supplied<br />
by Paul Mooney.<br />
What followed was one of those days that glow<br />
with an aura of happy warmth.<br />
Jérémie, his wife Stéphanie and the whole winery<br />
team were there to greet me. We tasted through the<br />
very fine range of Muscadet the winery produces.<br />
Made from the white grape Melon, these are typically<br />
dry, spare, minerally wines that sing alongside<br />
seafood.<br />
Jérémie’s father Yves<br />
examines the mysterious<br />
gift from the New World.<br />
It is<br />
very<br />
a common<br />
name here.<br />
But we will<br />
keep trying<br />
to find out<br />
more.<br />
(Melon, incidentally, doubles as the French word<br />
for bowler hat, which explains a bowler’s presence<br />
in the winery’s visual imagery).<br />
For a long time, the wines from this corner of the<br />
Loire were not particularly fashionable in global<br />
markets. That has been changing. Recent taste<br />
shifts away from heavy, woody styles in favour of<br />
lighter, fresher wines have been good for Muscadet.<br />
Jérémie’s new winery building, which includes a<br />
visitor tasting room, projects a certain confidence.<br />
Jérémie Huchet, and his father Yves, were thrilled<br />
to receive the bottle of Mission Estate Huchet. It was<br />
passed around family and friends with reverence,<br />
like some wondrous, precious artefact. Jérémie<br />
returned the favour, handing me a bottle of their best<br />
Muscadet which I have relayed back to Paul Mooney.<br />
Over lunch in the Huchet household, we shared<br />
everything we knew about Brother Cyprien. We know<br />
that he was the son of Jean and Marie Huchet, born<br />
in <strong>18</strong>35 and christened Laurent. His birthplace was<br />
the town of Vertou, a mere eight kilometres from<br />
Chateau-Thébaud.<br />
“It is very a common name here. But we will keep<br />
trying to find out more,” said Jérémie.<br />
So the genealogical link has yet to be established<br />
definitively. It doesn’t really matter. A connection<br />
has been made that may well continue meaningfully<br />
with or without it.<br />
68 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
cellar door | feature<br />
Monsoon Valley winery has a pleasant terrace overlooking the vineyard.<br />
Warm wine<br />
Elephants, bananas and grapes live happily<br />
together at Monsoon Valley, writes Paul<br />
Taggart.<br />
There is a winery in New Zealand<br />
with an elephant — Hawke’s<br />
Bay’s Elephant Hill. It is an<br />
impressive beast, which was<br />
shipped all the way from<br />
Myanmar. However, the<br />
elephant in question is made of wood.<br />
To find a winery with real-life elephants,<br />
you have to travel a bit further afield.<br />
At Monsoon Valley winery, near Hua Hin<br />
in Thailand, there are two elephants, which<br />
earn their keep by doing some work among<br />
the vines, but mainly by giving tourists rides<br />
around the vineyard.<br />
While riding elephants, patting tigers and<br />
holding snakes seem to be going out of fashion<br />
with many Western tourists, as it is seen as<br />
animal abuse, the Monsoon Valley elephants<br />
seemed reasonably chilled to me. One was<br />
working — taking a mother and her son on a<br />
trip round the vines with a mahout up front,<br />
while his friend had a day off, which meant he<br />
got to eat lots of bananas fed to him by excited<br />
children and equally excited adults.<br />
Intriguingly, the vineyard is on the site of a<br />
former elephant corral where wild elephants<br />
were domesticated back in the day.<br />
About 110 hectares are now under vines at<br />
the site. The earliest varieties planted included<br />
colombard, chenin blanc, sangiovese, rondo,<br />
and syrah. Other varieties have been planted<br />
since, including sauvignon blanc, although<br />
there was none available for tasting, or buying,<br />
the day I visited.<br />
Lunches were adequate.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
69
feature | cellar door<br />
70 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
cellar door | feature<br />
While keeping<br />
elephants for<br />
tourists’<br />
entertainment<br />
is going out<br />
of fashion, it<br />
is hard not to<br />
enjoy feeding the<br />
Monsoon Valley<br />
elephants a<br />
few bananas.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
71
feature | cellar door<br />
Every winery should have one.<br />
Some may say that it is a huge<br />
and brave gamble to establish<br />
wineries in Thailand (Monsoon<br />
Valley is one of at least three<br />
run by the same company), but<br />
when you discover the person<br />
behind the venture is Chalerm<br />
Yoovidhya, the degree of risk<br />
seems less significant. Chalerm<br />
is a member of the Red Bull<br />
energy drink family and, earlier<br />
this year, was reported by Forbes<br />
magazine to be worth $US21<br />
billion.<br />
That aside, Monsoon Valley is<br />
a pleasant drive from Hua Hin,<br />
so when you’re over the beach,<br />
the pool, and the golf, it makes<br />
for a great day trip. Most of the<br />
time Thailand is hot as stink,<br />
but the winery does have an<br />
air-conditioned indoor section<br />
where you can let the sweat<br />
evaporate before you dine.<br />
The food — salmon and a<br />
beef dish — was adequate, and<br />
the wines I sampled, sangiovese<br />
rose, sparkling, and white shiraz,<br />
were agreeable in the 34 degree<br />
heat and stifling humidity.<br />
The staff were hospitable and<br />
full of knowledge about how<br />
wonderful the Monsoon Valley<br />
wine is.<br />
But the winery was interesting<br />
more for its quirky novelty value<br />
rather than as a potential serious<br />
player on the wine stage. It made<br />
a big thing about “new latitude<br />
wines” produced by companies<br />
in Thailand, Vietnam, India<br />
and Brazil, which “understand<br />
tropical viticulture and<br />
winemaking, putting their wines<br />
on a par with favourites from<br />
the old world”.<br />
It sounded like a load of old<br />
cobblers to me, but I’m glad<br />
they’re trying, and the trip to<br />
Monsoon Valley was a great<br />
day out. If you’re in Hua Hin,<br />
it is certainly worth making the<br />
trip to the vineyard — even if<br />
it is only to see the elephants.<br />
The winery has plenty of rustic charm.<br />
72 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
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food | bars & restaurants<br />
Restaurant<br />
REVIEW<br />
<strong>WineNZ</strong>’s galloping gastronomes<br />
provide the lowdown on the<br />
newest and most exciting<br />
establishments especially<br />
suited to the wine lover.<br />
Noble Rot<br />
Wine Bar and Restaurant<br />
51 Lamb’s Conduit St<br />
London WC1N 3NB<br />
www.noblerot.co.uk<br />
An exciting place for adventurous wine lovers.<br />
Taking wine matching seriously<br />
A cosy ambience, buzzy but not noisy.<br />
An adventurous wine<br />
lover visiting London<br />
shouldn’t miss Noble<br />
Rot, the wine bar and<br />
restaurant established<br />
by the founders of the<br />
edgy, indie wine magazine of the same<br />
name. Mark Andrew and Dan Keeling,<br />
came together over a love of wine and<br />
their wine list shows it.<br />
It’s a long, intriguing list of exciting<br />
wines, many of which an antipodean may<br />
not be familiar with. There are carefully<br />
selected examples of appellations and<br />
varieties - from aligote to zibbibo, and<br />
Abruzzo to Yarra - mainly from across<br />
Europe but with a handful from the US,<br />
South Africa, South America and Australia,<br />
all begging to be tried. For those with<br />
deep pockets there are aged trophy wines<br />
74 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
ars & restaurants | food<br />
Humorous posters and candles<br />
add to the ambience.<br />
A glass of English bubbly, Hambledon Classic Cuvee<br />
such as Krug Collection <strong>19</strong>73 (£2250), or<br />
Trimbach Clos St Hune <strong>19</strong>85 (£498), as<br />
well as highly coveted Bordeaux, Rhone<br />
and Burgundy vintages. You could also<br />
try a retsina from Corinthia, a robola from<br />
Kefalonia, a pinot noir from Moravia, an<br />
ajaccio from Corsica or something from the<br />
Canary Islands. For the less adventurous,<br />
there are more familiar appellations such<br />
as Loire, Mosel or Rhone, but nothing<br />
from New Zealand.<br />
The owners are very Eurocentric,<br />
explains Josh, our knowledgable waiter<br />
who used to work in Melbourne and so<br />
is familiar with wines from this part of<br />
the world.<br />
We took his advice on wines to match<br />
individual dishes, Thanks to a Coravin<br />
system there’s a by-the-glass list of more<br />
than 30, augmented by a blackboard list<br />
of specials which includes aged wines by<br />
the glass such as a <strong>19</strong>90 Figeac for £63<br />
or a more modest Suduirat <strong>19</strong>85 for £<strong>19</strong>.<br />
There are two sizes of pour, 75ml or 125ml.<br />
We took advantage of this to compare<br />
two small glasses of different wines with<br />
some courses.<br />
Lambs Conduit is a quiet street in<br />
Bloomsbury, a couple of blocks from<br />
the British Museum and Russel Square.<br />
Outside the modest shopfront are a handful<br />
of tables where patrons were enjoying a<br />
late Saturday afternoon glass of wine and<br />
bar food.<br />
We were early - it’s difficult to gauge<br />
travel times in London - and the restaurant<br />
was not yet open, so we sat in the bar with<br />
a glass of English bubbly, a refreshingly<br />
nutty Hambledon Classic Cuvee from<br />
Hampshire, and took in our surroundings.<br />
They were unpretentious; dark wood,<br />
paler walls above the dado hung with<br />
framed posters - quirky covers of their<br />
magazine and humorous cartoons, and a<br />
well leaned-upon bar. These premises had<br />
been a wine bar in a previous life.<br />
Further inside, the long, narrow restaurant<br />
extends back from the street, dark, but with<br />
glassware glinting. Although it appears<br />
dim, the lights are appropriately placed<br />
for the tables so you can read the menu<br />
and see what you are eating. The decor is<br />
modest, simple but cosy, the effort going<br />
into the wine, food and service rather than<br />
the decoration. Once the restaurant fills<br />
up, the atmosphere is buzzy but not loud.<br />
An example of the slightly self-deprecating<br />
humour in some of the posters.<br />
Chefs Paul Weaver and Stephen Harris<br />
(formerly of the Michelin-starred The<br />
Sportsman in Whitstable) present a small<br />
but contemporary English menu, fresh,<br />
seasonal and changing daily, but with some<br />
more or less permanent signature dishes,<br />
such as slip sole with smoked butter, or a<br />
dish featuring smoked eel.<br />
Provenance is indicated - the smoked eel<br />
is from Lincolnshire, beef from Hereford,<br />
tomatoes from San Marzano in Italy, and<br />
haricot beans from Brittany with their own<br />
Coco de Paimpol AOC. Interesting oldfashioned<br />
but newly trendy vegetables and<br />
flavourings appear - samphire, a crisp, salty<br />
succulent harvested during a short summer<br />
season from tidal estuaries, the savoury herb<br />
lovage, and croutons cooked in dripping.<br />
Even the bread selection included a slightly<br />
sweet, salty soda bread with buttermilk<br />
and molasses, along with sourdough and<br />
focaccia, Soda bread, raised with baking<br />
soda rather than yeast, was once common<br />
in the British Isles.<br />
A starter of lamb sweetbreads came with<br />
fat, crunchy green beans, crisp croutons and<br />
melting lardo, cured pork back fat. Josh<br />
recommended a Savoie wine,<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
75
food | bars & restaurants<br />
Lamb sweetbreads with fat, crunchy green beans,<br />
crisp croutons and melting lardo.<br />
A blackboard list of additional wines by the glass makes your mouth water.<br />
A&M Quenard, Chignin, 2016, red,<br />
peppery with firm tannins, that went well<br />
with the richness of the dish.<br />
Smoked eel in this instance came with<br />
summery gazpacho, beautifully tomatoey,<br />
with croutons for a bit of crunch and torn<br />
pieces of lovage leaf to add a savoury<br />
touch - a well balanced dish, crisp and fresh,<br />
especially with a Greek rosé from Naousa.<br />
No matter what comes with it, samphire<br />
is one of those things you can’t pass when<br />
you see it on the menu. In this case it<br />
came with seared thornback ray with tiny<br />
brown shrimp and capers. Josh suggested<br />
a white Burgundy, either a chardonnay<br />
from Pouilly-Vinzelles or an aligoté, the<br />
other white from Burgundy, so I selected<br />
a small glass of each to compare. The<br />
chardonnay was more complex, but there<br />
was too much going on in it to complement<br />
the crisp, buttery ray with salty capers<br />
and samphire. The blander aligoté was a<br />
friendlier accompaniment.<br />
Crispy-skinned, grilled lamb saddle from<br />
Swaledale in Yorkshire came with a roll of<br />
lamb belly, Coco de Paimpol beans from<br />
Brittany, chunky green sauce and a salty<br />
jus. It was matched with a fruity Spanish<br />
red, Daterra Viticoltores Casas de Enriba<br />
from Valdeorras in Galicia.<br />
Although we had little room left for<br />
dessert, we couldn’t resist, especially as<br />
each had a recommended wine match.<br />
At last, here is a rare restaurant that cares<br />
about the difficult art of matching wine<br />
with dessert! I have to admit we selected<br />
the wine first and then the dessert that<br />
went with it.<br />
I chose a Madeira, 10-year old Malmsey<br />
from M Blandy, delicious both by itself<br />
and with a warm, chocolatey and slightly<br />
bitter mousse with crunchy salt on top and<br />
a scoop of that delectable British speciality,<br />
clotted cream.<br />
An unusual natural wine, La Stoppa,<br />
Vigna del Volta passito from Emilia<br />
Romagna, golden in colour, cloudy with<br />
oodles of ripe tropical fruit and a long<br />
finish, was accompanied by blueberry<br />
tart with slivered almonds and clotted<br />
cream at the side. Interestingly, like the<br />
rest of the food, the desserts were plainly<br />
presented without all the squiggles and<br />
fancy garnishes so beloved of many New<br />
Zealand chefs.<br />
All in all, it was a satisfying night, one<br />
of those special places that takes wine and<br />
food and their matching seriously, and has<br />
extremely knowledgeable staff to help you<br />
navigate an extensive and exciting wine list.<br />
The food was fascinating with its English<br />
and European specialities, even if some<br />
dishes were a tad too salty for my palate.<br />
And it wasn’t much more expensive than<br />
one might spend in a good New Zealand<br />
restaurant.<br />
Food<br />
Wine List<br />
Ambience<br />
Service<br />
Overall<br />
Reviewed by Charmian Smith<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Note: In Wellington there is a wine<br />
bar also called Noble Rot, which is not<br />
connected with the original in London.<br />
Lincolnshire smoked eel in a fresh, summery<br />
gazpacho with lovage.<br />
Samphire with ray,<br />
tiny brown shrimps and capers.<br />
Grilled Swaledale lamb saddle, lamb roll, with<br />
haricot beans and green sauce.<br />
76 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
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food | well matched<br />
Sunny<br />
times ahead<br />
Vic Williams is a seasoned wine and food writer<br />
who has spent the last 25 years communicating<br />
about their combinations in print and on radio.<br />
Sunny times ahead?<br />
Well, let’s hope so.<br />
After the bleakest of<br />
winters and a spring<br />
that often disappointed,<br />
we deserve them.<br />
Mind you, being forced to stay<br />
indoors can be encouragement enough<br />
to justify spending more time in the<br />
kitchen, and that’s when old recipes are<br />
resurrected and new ones developed.<br />
Some of the dishes on these pages<br />
are old and some are new, but as always<br />
they have all been devised with a<br />
particular wine style in mind. Most<br />
people choose a wine to go with a<br />
specific dish, but it is fun to reverse<br />
the process by selecting the wine first.<br />
So we have seafood in a dish tailormade<br />
to accompany a robust rosé, and<br />
a chicken dish borrowed from Spain<br />
with the aim of bringing out the best<br />
in the Spanish variety, albarino.<br />
Browning butter and combining<br />
it with capers, chopped parsley<br />
and lemon juice is a classic French<br />
technique that is perfect for a smoothtextured,<br />
faintly citric chardonnay,<br />
and searing ox heart so that it is still<br />
richly pink-centred brings an old-time<br />
ingredient right up-to-date and creates<br />
a perfect partnership with a savoury<br />
Hawke's Bay syrah in the process<br />
And port with blue cheese? Now<br />
that really IS a classic.<br />
As always, we suggest that you use<br />
these combinations as starting points<br />
for your own ‘perfect partnerships’.<br />
Enjoy!<br />
Nautilus Marlborough<br />
Albarino 20<strong>18</strong><br />
with poached chicken in a saffron/<br />
almond sauce<br />
The faintly nut-like aromas and front-palate flavours of this<br />
smartly balanced white were perfectly pitched to partner the<br />
almond-based sauce coating the chicken. Clive Jones has scored<br />
a few awards with previous vintages, and his success looks<br />
certain to continue. This latest example of his winemaking<br />
skills has plenty of savoury-edged stonefruit aromas edged by<br />
a suggestion of lemon rind, and a rich but nicely tuned flavour<br />
profile that proved a perfect match for the Spanish-inspired dish.<br />
78 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
well matched | food<br />
Leefield Station Marlborough Chardonnay 2017<br />
with tarakihi fillets drizzled with brown butter,<br />
lemon juice and capers<br />
It was the citric character of this nicely focused Chardonnay that<br />
sat particularly well with the lemony sauce on the pan-fried fish.<br />
Browning the butter accentuated the match, while the capers<br />
added exclamation points of saltiness to pick up on the wine’s<br />
restrained acid backbone. The sauce is a French-based classic,<br />
and the wine is made in the classic style for this popular variety.<br />
Tohu Nelson Pinot Rosé 20<strong>18</strong><br />
with squid and mussels in a tomato broth<br />
Made with around 5gm/L of residual sugar, this approachable<br />
Rosé is drier than many, and that made it a most amenable<br />
companion for the tomato-based broth of the dish. We often<br />
think of white wine as the only partner for seafood, but when the<br />
star ingredients share their bowl with the robust flavours of red<br />
onion, garlic, parsley and chillies a boldly flavoured Rosé works<br />
well. The wine’s subtle acidity played happily with the tomato<br />
flavours while its upfront fruit tied in nicely with the savoury<br />
characters of the mussels and squid. A tip: A little sugar is often<br />
added to tomato-based sauces, but be cautious in this case. The<br />
wine is effectively bone-dry, and could be rendered austere by<br />
even a hint of sweetness.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
79
food | well matched<br />
Vidal Legacy Gimblett Gravels Hawkes Bay<br />
Syrah 2016<br />
with seared beef heart and polenta<br />
Hugh Crichton’s top-of-the-line Syrah is full of cracked pepper and<br />
liquorice aromas leading to a big-fruited flavour profile, and that<br />
made it an ideal candidate to accompany the bold, earthy, flavours<br />
of ox heart. We served it on the rare side alongside polenta spiked<br />
with Parmigiano-Reggiano, and were delighted with the way in<br />
which the wine’s opulent texture and rich berry notes emphasised<br />
the rustically savoury character of this underrated cut of meat.<br />
Croft Reserve Tawny Port<br />
with Kikorangi Blue Cheese, quince paste and breads<br />
The House of Croft was established in 1588 and remains in<br />
the hands of the founding company today. This member of the<br />
portfolio was aged for around seven years in oak casks. Nicolas<br />
Heath, marketing director for both Croft and Krohn, introduced<br />
it at a lunch at Auckland’s Northern Club and placed it alongside<br />
Croft Distinction, Croft Vintage 2011 and Krohn Quinta do Retiro<br />
Novo 2009. The cheese sat nicely with all four, but it was the<br />
chocolate, dried fruit and toasted nut notes of the Tawny that most<br />
directly emphasised the savoury sweetness of this classic blue.<br />
80 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
Guylian the world’s favourite Belgian chocolates.<br />
The perfect match for any occasion.<br />
The World’s Favourite Belgian Chocolates
feature | thailand<br />
Statues<br />
and<br />
dentists<br />
Constantly searching for<br />
interesting new wine<br />
regions for our readers,<br />
Paul Taggart packed his<br />
bag and headed to . . .<br />
Hua Hin<br />
There are plenty of statues for culture vultures.<br />
Life’s a beach for some in Thailand.<br />
82 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
thailand | travel<br />
Thailand has something<br />
for almost everyone –<br />
although there are several<br />
clichés of the type of<br />
tourists who visit the<br />
country, and examples of<br />
those clichés are present in abundance.<br />
Backpackers<br />
First there are the backpackers. Mainly<br />
in their 20s, out for a good time at low<br />
cost, and they generally do have a good<br />
time unless they dabble in drugs, try their<br />
hand at graffiti on sacred monuments or<br />
generally lack the wisdom required to adjust<br />
to a country with a set of values that have<br />
not been debased by several generations<br />
of Western decadence.<br />
The Full Moon parties are probably the<br />
highlight for many of these backpackers,<br />
with all-night dancing and drinking,<br />
followed by a hangover, or a trip to a<br />
local hospital. Note: medical insurance is<br />
vital, even for strapping young rugby boys<br />
who consider themselves indestructible.<br />
Many visitors to Thailand now prefer to see elephants in a natural habitat,<br />
rather than chained up and ridden.<br />
To you sir, only one million baht.<br />
Culture Vultures<br />
The next group are the culture vultures<br />
– either middle-aged folk in search of<br />
Buddhist temples and elephant sanctuaries,<br />
or families giving the kids a second dose of<br />
overseas cultural experience, following an<br />
earlier trip to the Gold Coast theme parks.<br />
The Grand Palace complex in Bangkok<br />
is a must for this group. Built in 1782 and<br />
the home of the Thai King and the royal<br />
court it has some impressive architecture<br />
and is the spiritual heart of the country.<br />
A personal guide, or joining a tour, are<br />
the best ways to see the many interesting<br />
buildings and to learn about the history. Our<br />
guide met us near our hotel and together<br />
we navigated the railway and the river<br />
boat. Without Khun Sai the day would<br />
have been so much more of a hassle, and<br />
much less educational.<br />
The traffic in Bangkok is bad – seriously<br />
bad. One evening we had dinner with a<br />
couple of Kiwis who live in the city, and<br />
not thinking too deeply about rush hour<br />
we jumped in a cab for the relatively short<br />
hop to the restaurant, then after dinner did<br />
the same to get home. Coming back was<br />
a ten-minute drive, getting there took an<br />
hour and a half.<br />
The train system is good, and a Rabbit<br />
card topped up with a couple of hundred<br />
baht will see you happily whizzing about<br />
the city all the time you are there. Tuk<br />
Tuks are useful too, but can also get stuck<br />
in traffic for long spells and, unlike taxis,<br />
aren’t air-conditioned, so you can do a lot<br />
of sweating while going nowhere.<br />
One of my daughters, who lives in the<br />
city, commutes to work on the back of a<br />
motorbike taxi. While it is quick and cheap,<br />
I did ask her some searching questions<br />
about her health insurance policy after<br />
seeing her whizz off into a seething mass<br />
of traffic on the back of a Honda Click.<br />
Resort people<br />
Throughout Thailand there are<br />
spectacular resorts and developments aimed<br />
at Westerners. If you ask ten people where<br />
are the best areas or most restful island<br />
paradises you’ll get ten different answers.<br />
Age, interests and affluence will be factors<br />
in which resort is right for you, and doing<br />
some leisurely on-line research can be part<br />
of the fun of planning a holiday.<br />
There are good internal flights to a variety<br />
of destinations and I suggest a few nights<br />
in Bangkok to soak up the flavour of the<br />
city and to try some good restaurants before<br />
moving on to the second part of the holiday.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
83
feature | thailand<br />
A quiet spot by the pool in Hua Hin.<br />
To avoid another flight we opted for a<br />
drive to Hua Hin so we could go when we<br />
were ready and stop along the way for some<br />
sight-seeing if we so wished.<br />
There are various companies that will<br />
supply cars for the three or four hour drive,<br />
and most Bangkok taxi drivers will offer<br />
to take you. The price for a trip is about<br />
1000 Baht, give or take a few hundred,<br />
depending on your haggling skills.<br />
The ride can be a bit dodgy, with some<br />
drivers apparently keen to show their<br />
racing-driver prowess. Vehicles are also<br />
a mixed bag of age and quality and it<br />
is good to remember that in Thailand<br />
you don’t have Jacinda to look after your<br />
every requirement – you have to look after<br />
yourself. If a car turns up with seatbelts<br />
that don’t work then don’t get in it. If the<br />
driver is careering through traffic like he’s<br />
on the dodgems then tell him to pull his<br />
head in – it could just extend your life.<br />
Hua Hin was the holiday place of Thai<br />
royalty back in the day, being just 40km<br />
from Bangkok. It was also the first major<br />
tourist centre for foreigners.<br />
While there is a beach, there is plenty<br />
more going on, with golf, water parks, tailor<br />
shops, where suits and clothes of all types<br />
can be made up overnight, restaurants and<br />
even a decent little wine bar.<br />
Hotels range from the cheap and cheerful<br />
to the palatial – one of the latter is the<br />
Centara, which serves a rather spectacular<br />
afternoon tea for those who want to visit<br />
and take a look around without paying the<br />
hefty room rate.<br />
When we jumped into a tuk tuk outside<br />
High tea at the Centara Hotel in Hua Hin.<br />
one of the shopping malls and told the<br />
young driver we were headed to Centara, a<br />
twinkle appeared in his eye and his opening<br />
bid for the fare jumped from the usual 30<br />
or 40 baht to one million baht.<br />
Needless to say, he didn’t get it.<br />
The hotel has a large swimming pool area<br />
for families, good bars and restaurants, and<br />
for those requiring some stress-free R & R,<br />
it would be a wonderful place to spend a<br />
week without setting foot outside the door.<br />
Dining out in Bangkok isn’t all pad thai. This<br />
beautiful presented dessert was served up at Jim<br />
Thompson Restaurant and Wine Bar, Pathumwan<br />
in Bangkok.<br />
Shoppers<br />
The days of staggering bargains in foreign<br />
parts are largely gone, with the prices in<br />
New Zealand now not that different to what<br />
is available in Asian centres.<br />
New Zealand has discount warehouses<br />
full of cut-price sports gear and Alibaba<br />
brings packages of things we largely don’t<br />
need from every corner of China direct to<br />
our homes on a daily basis.<br />
However, for some, shopping is more<br />
84 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
about the chase than the kill, and there are<br />
plenty of places in Bangkok and Hua Hin<br />
to keep a keen shopper busy for fifty years.<br />
The must-buy items are colourful<br />
shirts, made-while-you-wait dresses, vivid<br />
material (much of which comes from China<br />
and India) to have your own clothes made<br />
up at home and a range of ornaments<br />
featuring elephants. All the above made<br />
it into our suitcases.<br />
The Thai people are extremely pleasant<br />
and shopping there is a much more<br />
enjoyable experience than in some other<br />
Asian countries. Even haggling over the<br />
price is much more of a game rather than<br />
the aggressive battle of wits it sometimes<br />
can be, say in a Hong Kong market.<br />
Shopping when on holiday is mostly for<br />
things we might want, not what we need,<br />
so it is basically a leisure activity. With<br />
the major malls in both Bangkok and Hua<br />
Hin all well stocked with local food stores,<br />
coffee shops and the American trio you find<br />
everywhere – McDonalds, Burger King and<br />
Starbucks – there is always somewhere you<br />
can put the bags down and take the weight<br />
off for ten minutes before starting again.<br />
Medical tourists<br />
This is a tricky one, but as a person<br />
who has spent a fair chunk of my kids’<br />
inheritance on crowns, I can see the appeal<br />
of getting teeth done, or even a hip replaced,<br />
at a fraction of the cost of what it would<br />
be in New Zealand.<br />
From time-to-time horror stories emerge<br />
of breast surgery that has gone wrong, or<br />
superbugs that have almost killed patients<br />
in foreign parts. Our medical professionals<br />
jump on these stories with apparent relish<br />
to push their case for retaining such work<br />
in New Zealand private hospitals and<br />
dental clinics.<br />
A few years ago I had a minor operation<br />
on a finger in a Wellington private hospital<br />
(a ganglion for those of a medical bent).<br />
After it was all over I looked at just the<br />
surgeon’s fee (not all the other associated<br />
costs) and the length of time the operation<br />
took and multiplied it out to cover an<br />
eight-hour day. Even allowing for generous<br />
holidays and a half-day off on Fridays for<br />
golf, the surgeon would have been earning<br />
millions of dollars a year.<br />
Ganglions can be removed in some<br />
doctors’ surgeries and, to be quite honest,<br />
they could probably be removed by a<br />
handyman in a garden shed, or not removed<br />
at all, so it is my own fault for allowing<br />
such extortion to take place. I would have<br />
been perfectly happy to have had the work<br />
done in Thailand, as long as I had some<br />
reliable references for the surgeon.<br />
While in Bangkok we met a recentlymarried<br />
couple from Hawke’s Bay. The<br />
For those of a culinary bent, there are many great<br />
Thai cooking courses in Bangkok.<br />
husband had just had a mouth full of crowns<br />
fitted at a dental practice recommended<br />
to him by a Kiwi who lives in Bangkok.<br />
It wasn’t the cheapest place in town, but<br />
had a great reputation. He was more than<br />
happy with the work, and due to the lower<br />
dental charges, compared with at home,<br />
the pair had paid for their wonderful Asian<br />
honeymoon and still had money in the bank.<br />
I guess the same rules apply as with<br />
taxis. You have to take responsibility for<br />
your own destiny (and dentistry). In New<br />
Zealand we assume that all doctors are<br />
vastly capable, honourable and ethical – and<br />
if they’re not there is a system that should<br />
weed them out. In Thailand you have to<br />
do some weeding yourself.<br />
But in New Zealand our utopian socialist<br />
society seems to have forgotten we have<br />
teeth. Those who cannot afford to pay, have<br />
to put up with rotting gnashers, or have them<br />
pulled out en masse. I’m not sure why that<br />
is, when we can afford to send rich folks’<br />
teenagers off to university at taxpayers’<br />
expense and send well-remunerated MPs<br />
on holiday to Japan to watch the All Blacks<br />
play.<br />
So if people decide to get their dental<br />
work done in Thailand to save money, and<br />
occasionally one of them has to be fixed<br />
up in the public health system back home<br />
at taxpayers’ expense, then I don’t have a<br />
problem with that. Money has been spent<br />
on the wrong things for years – often as a<br />
result of election bribes (think university<br />
subsidies) and our teeth are victims of that.<br />
Maybe assisting low-income folk with<br />
discount air tickets to Thailand for dental<br />
work and ganglion surgery could be a<br />
good election bribe suggestion for one of<br />
the political parties?<br />
thailand | travel<br />
shady side of the street<br />
While Thai people are generally genuine,<br />
friendly and warm to visitors, there is a<br />
seedy aspect to the country’s tourism.<br />
Largely driven by poverty, the sex trade is<br />
big, and has been for decades. While most<br />
participants in the industry are volunteers<br />
there is a very dark side too, with sex<br />
trafficking a nasty part of the business.<br />
There is an element of our society that<br />
will go to Thailand specifically for the sex<br />
trade, but for others it is simply an everpresent<br />
fact of life you will come across<br />
as you move around the cities, especially<br />
after dark.<br />
A sub-set of the sex trade is the bride trade<br />
with (mainly) older divorced or widowed<br />
men in pursuit of a new life partner, usually<br />
forty years their junior.<br />
Many of the relationships don’t last,<br />
for obvious reasons, as they are based on<br />
finance, not romance.<br />
It is a situation where even a 65-yearold<br />
Pom on a pension can look like a good<br />
catch to a 20-year-old with parents to look<br />
after and siblings to put through school. A<br />
silver lining of sorts is that many of these<br />
guys make Thailand their home, so at least<br />
their brides aren’t dragged away from their<br />
families for a life in Lancashire, Alabama<br />
or Southland. While there’s nothing wrong<br />
with Invercargill, rolling your “r”s would<br />
take some adjusting to after growing up<br />
in Hua Hin.<br />
Wine<br />
It took a few side-roads before I made it<br />
to the main subject, but wine is all around in<br />
Thailand. The only problem is that because<br />
of duties/taxes/government rules – it costs<br />
a lot of cash, so for those planning to be<br />
there for any length of time, a switch to<br />
local beer or whiskey will be a lot kinder<br />
on your wallet.<br />
A bottle of Marlborough sauvignon blanc<br />
can cost $50 in a supermarket, more than<br />
a bottle of spirits.<br />
But there is local wine – although being<br />
local doesn’t necessarily make it much<br />
cheaper.<br />
There are about six wineries in the<br />
country – which is ridiculous as it is hot<br />
as stink and incredibly humid. It must be<br />
a full-time job battling the powdery - but<br />
you have to admire their have-a-go spirit.<br />
The longest established and probably<br />
best-known winery is Monsoon Valley, a<br />
short bus trip from Hua Hin. Check out our<br />
cellar door section on page 69.<br />
<strong>WineNZ</strong>’s travel is self-funded. We<br />
don’t accept junkets from airlines or<br />
tourism bodies to say nice things about<br />
nasty places.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
85
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maserati | motoring<br />
Congestion is horrible when you try to leave Makati on a Friday afternoon. The Levante’s cocoon of luxury makes the time in traffic slightly less stressful.<br />
How daft would it be to test a 250 km/h Maserati Levante in Manila,<br />
a city with the worst traffic congestion in the world? Very daft, but<br />
Dennis Valdes did it anyway – by heading to the beach for a day.<br />
Maserati<br />
vs<br />
Evinrude<br />
The Levante chills after battling its way through Manila traffic<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
87
motoring | maserati<br />
A pair of toys – both work well with iPhones.<br />
The traffic is forgotten when you’re on the water.<br />
Dennis Valdes and 12-year-old daughter Athena.<br />
There is a saying that as<br />
boys get bigger, their toys<br />
also grow larger - and<br />
more expensive. I proved<br />
the theory correct when<br />
I tested two toys for big<br />
boys recently - a Maserati Levante with a<br />
3.5 litre engine and a Hammerhead rigid<br />
inflatable boat (RIB) with a 250 hp Evinrude<br />
outboard, both loaners from friends.<br />
The Maserati is the smaller of the two, but<br />
under that hood lurks a powerful V6 with<br />
a throaty Italian gurgle that is sure to put a<br />
smile on anyone's dial. I drove the car from<br />
Makati City, the Central Business District of<br />
Metro Manila in The Philippines, to Nasugbu<br />
in Batangas province for a weekend at the<br />
beach. Leaving Makati on a Friday night<br />
takes all the pleasure out of driving. For a<br />
good hour, I couldn't get past 30 km/h on the<br />
main highway leading out of town.<br />
Once on the main expressway to Cavite,<br />
however, the Levante was amazing. The<br />
acceleration allowed me to squirt past a<br />
Filipino jeepney like it was standing still.<br />
Oh wait, it actually was, as it was taking on<br />
passengers.<br />
Driving in Cavite, you never know what<br />
is going to pop up in front of you. Aside<br />
88 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
from a stray dog or errant cow, there are the<br />
more challenging elderly grandmothers with<br />
children in tow, tricycles that won't pull over as<br />
they roll along at 25 km/h in the fast lane and,<br />
my personal favourite, the motorcyclists that<br />
zip along at 80 k/mh, no helmets, cellphones<br />
in hand, hurtling towards you in your lane. But<br />
the cocoon of the Maserati’s cabin provides<br />
a soothing space to prevent all that stress<br />
from penetrating.<br />
After passing through a few small towns<br />
and the bustle of Cavite, the road turns into<br />
a two-lane zigzag through a national park.<br />
This is the best part of the drive. The Levante<br />
has a Sport mode that, when engaged, turns<br />
the throaty gurgle into a deep roar, and the<br />
acceleration goes to G-Force levels. I was<br />
very impressed with the car’s handling around<br />
the bends and never felt there was any risk<br />
of the tyres letting go.<br />
One small but significant thing I loved<br />
about the Maserati was how well it synced<br />
to my iPhone. A text would come in, I'd get<br />
the car to read it to me, I'd dictate a response,<br />
and it would be sent, all without me taking my<br />
eyes off the road or my hands off the wheel.<br />
The entire sync system was super smooth<br />
and intelligent.<br />
Once on the beaches of Nasugbu, I was<br />
able to turn my attention to the other toy, the<br />
Hammerhead RIB. The Hammerhead is made<br />
by Advanced Composite Systems in Subic<br />
Bay, Philippines, using an Australian mould<br />
to create the deep V hull. The 8-metre version<br />
I borrowed for the trip to the beach sported a<br />
250 hp Evinrude G1 engine, which is a ton of<br />
horsepower for one of ACS's smaller boats.<br />
In the water, the Evinrude can push the<br />
Hammerhead beyond 40 knots or 74 km/h.<br />
While that’s nowhere near as fast as the<br />
Levante when you get an open road, speed<br />
on water is very different from on land. The<br />
Hammerhead is an open boat, and at 40 knots<br />
the speed seems huge and far more than enough<br />
for the kids to get up on the foil wakeboard.<br />
Music is a necessity for a top day on the<br />
water. The Hammerhead has a Fusion stereo<br />
system, which connected effortlessly to my<br />
iPhone via Bluetooth. The speakers and<br />
subwoofer on board were excellent. When<br />
running at speed, engine noise and wind noise<br />
drown out the music, no matter how good<br />
the system, but once parked and anchored,<br />
it was cool to have my quality “Dad” playlist<br />
available.<br />
Boats are infinitely more customisable than<br />
cars. Hammerheads can have teak floors,<br />
multiple seat configurations, and racks for all<br />
other kinds of accessories. Indeed, the boat<br />
toy is inevitably a conduit for lots of other<br />
toys for the water. Skis and wakeboards are<br />
some of the usual additions. If they’re too<br />
strenuous then the boat can be used to transport<br />
SUPs to a calm beach or scuba tanks to an<br />
offshore reef.<br />
maserati | motoring<br />
Dennis Valdes with his wife Tessa ready to head to<br />
the beach in the Maserati Levante.<br />
So which toy would I rather have?<br />
A lot more people can ride in an 8-metre<br />
RIB than a four-seater Levante. But on the<br />
other side of the coin, nothing compares to<br />
the Maserati's signature, sexy gurgle. It’s a<br />
tough call, so probably best to have both!<br />
Dennis Valdes is a Makati-based company<br />
president, motoring enthusiast, national<br />
rep underwater hockey player, keen foil<br />
wakeboarder and Marlborough sauvignon<br />
blanc enthusiast.<br />
Heading home to Makati’s city lights after a break at the beach.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
89
last word<br />
oysters<br />
In praise of<br />
Vic Williams<br />
S<br />
ome foods polarise people.<br />
Tripe is one. Raw oysters<br />
are another.<br />
Have you ever heard<br />
anyone say that they ‘quite<br />
like’ or ‘don’t mind’ either<br />
one? Tripe lovers will travel hundreds of<br />
kilometres to enjoy their chosen treat, and<br />
oyster aficionados would crawl bare-kneed<br />
over a kilometre of broken shells for theirs.<br />
Those who fall into the opposite camp,<br />
however, would quite likely endure similar<br />
hardships to avoid either delicacy. Such are<br />
the vagaries of the human appetite.<br />
I enjoy tripe, sensitively prepared and<br />
served either in the classical manner with<br />
sliced onions and an indecent amount<br />
of creamy sauce, or in the Italian style<br />
with loads of garlic and tomatoes. Or<br />
indeed in any of the other myriad ways<br />
in which this now unfashionable meat<br />
cut can be prepared. Those who share my<br />
enthusiasm might like to know that there<br />
are usually two examples on the menu of<br />
Tony Astle’s legendary Antoine’s restaurant<br />
in Auckland’s Parnell.<br />
But it is oysters that get me really excited,<br />
and I am delighted that it is at last becoming<br />
easier in this country to enjoy them freshly<br />
shucked.<br />
People from European countries are often<br />
shocked to be offered pre-opened oysters<br />
in New Zealand restaurants, because they<br />
have been brought up to believe that eating<br />
a dead oyster could kill them.<br />
Oddly, we are taught the same about<br />
other shellfish, such as mussels. Most<br />
recipe books tell us to discard any with open<br />
shells because “that means they are dead”.<br />
How did oysters escape this admonition?<br />
Sadly, oysters can be a trigger for a<br />
malady that legend has it is connected with<br />
lavish dining – gout. It troubles me only<br />
occasionally, but the pain is great enough<br />
to drive me to caution when it comes to<br />
the enjoyment of my favourite bivalve.<br />
Thus it was that, finding myself in a<br />
weekend market in coastal France a couple<br />
of years ago, I was reduced to near-tears to<br />
see a dramatically-moustached character<br />
expertly opening a pile of oysters that he<br />
assured me had been removed from the<br />
ocean less than two hours before. The region<br />
where my partner and I were staying was<br />
famous for its oysters, and even though I<br />
was just beginning to recover from a weeklong<br />
attack of my painful nemesis, I could<br />
not in all culinary conscience ignore him.<br />
“Deux huitres, s’il vous plait,” I<br />
said. “Deux?” he asked incredulously,<br />
amazed that I wanted only one each for<br />
my partner and myself. “J’ai le mal du<br />
pied,” I explained, hoping that he would<br />
understand my improvised French for<br />
‘sickness of the foot’ and therefore my<br />
predicament. “Ah,” he said knowingly,<br />
as he opened two oysters and passed them<br />
over, refusing payment.<br />
I closed my eyes and tipped the oyster<br />
and its attendant liquor into my mouth.<br />
Bliss. It was fleshy, unbelievably juicy and<br />
screamed of ocean spray. In the hollow of<br />
that shell nestled all that is wonderful about<br />
natural, unadorned food.<br />
That single oyster, enjoyed on a sunny<br />
day in a French carpark, was one of the<br />
most marvellous things I have ever eaten.<br />
Gout, be buggered. Oysters rule.<br />
90 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>
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