Central Otago travel guide

The soaring mountains, dry highlands and glacial-blue braided rivers of New Zealand’s Central Otago region have long made it a favourite destination for adventure-seekers and filmmakers (most notably the lord of the rings himself, Sir Peter Jackson).

But the region’s celebrated wines have become a draw in their own right. Wine arrived here during the 19th-century gold rush, French immigrant Jean Désiré Féraud planting the first vines in 1864, but it wasn’t until the late 20th century that a commercial wine industry appeared in Gibbston Valley.

Today, the Central Otago wine region encompasses six sub-regions, all within 50km of the old gold-mining town of Cromwell. Pinot Noir dominates, but Chardonnay, Riesling, Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer are well represented, too.

A world-class hospitality industry has sprung up to cater to Otago’s visitors. Queenstown is the central hub of activity, with Wānaka (at the southern tip of the eponymous lake) providing a gentler alternative, but Cromwell is probably the best place to base yourself if you’re there for the wine.

Accommodation ranges from budget hostels to luxury lodges, while excellent restaurants serve innovative menus based on local produce.

Activities on offer include everything from skydives to wine tours, and Ngāi Tahu, the South Island’s principal Māori iwi, or tribe, is involved in much of the region’s tourism, giving visitors the chance to learn about indigenous history and culture along the way.

How to get there

The nearest major international airport is in Christchurch (a five-hour drive from Cromwell), but you can fly direct to Queenstown airport (40 minutes from Cromwell) from New Zealand’s three largest cities and Australia’s main east coast centres.

Around the vineyards

Greg Hay founded Wet Jacket Wines in 2015, having already established Chard Farm (1987) and Peregrine Wines (1998). ‘None of us knew what we were doing when we started,’ he says. ‘We all encouraged each other, swapping ideas about what worked. It’s that spirit that makes this region so special.

Greg founded Wet Jacket as a ‘bit of fun’ after the success of his two larger ventures. The original cellar door was a wool shed near Arrowtown (complete with a sheep-shearing room), but they’ve since opened one on the lakeside in Queenstown. Half of the revenue from wine tastings funds conservation projects, which Greg oversees himself.

Mountains and lakes

Rippon Vineyard is the northernmost of the region, overlooking lake Wānaka with a view of the glacier-topped peaks of Mt Aspiring national park (see map).

‘The mountains are key,’ says Hazel Nasta, the estate’s cellar door manager. ‘They’re a wall to weather from the west, giving us a dry, stable, continental climate with hot days and cold nights.

'Central Otago sits on free-draining schists, so the vines put all their energy into the fruit, producing intense, vibrant grapes.

'There’s no appellation control in New Zealand,’ Hazel continues. ‘So winemakers can experiment more freely. Our older vines are starting to express the terroir very clearly, so our Sauvignon Blanc is flintier than the lemongrass and tropical flavours of Marlborough.'

Just north of Cromwell, on a hill overlooking lake Dunstan, is Domaine Thomson Wines , the winery buildings clad and roofed with rustic, acid-washed, corrugated galvanised steel, to echo the region’s gold rush past.

Owners David and PM Hall-Jones also have vineyards in Burgundy, the spiritual home of Pinot Noir. ‘It’s a wonderful contrast,’ says PM. ‘We have a millennium of tradition in France, but decades of innovation in Otago, which is changing the way we think of that grape.’

Going for gold

Situated near the old gold sluicings in Bannockburn, Felton Road is probably the region’s most internationally renowned winery, having won awards from around the globe.

‘We were part of that second generation of Otago winemakers,’ says Nigel Greening, who took over the estate in 2000. ‘We’re biodynamic, which is a fancy way of saying we use the ecosystem, such as falcons chasing birds from the vines. But we do play music to the wines in the cellars!’

Felton Road’s cellar door is open on weekdays. You need to make an appointment, but it’s worth it for a place that’s considered one of New Zealand’s top producers, as the visit includes a detailed tour of the vines and winery, as well as samples of their wines.

The spectacular cellar door at nearby Te Kano (‘the seed’ in Māori) thrusts over the valley with views up Kawarau gorge. You can pick up snacks from the deli to accompany wines on the terrace or pack them up as a picnic to enjoy on the estate (60% of which is reserved for native vegetation).

Your Central Otago address book

Accommodation

Gibbston Valley Lodge

Gibbston Valley was the first commercial winery in the region, and its lodge and spa are gorgeous. Rooms from NZ$674, including spa and restaurant.

Lime Tree Lodge

This luxury boutique lodge, with beautiful gardens and a pool, sits just outside Wānaka. Rooms from NZ$395.

Marsden Lake Resort

In Cromwell, the Marsden Lake Resort has self-contained villas opposite the entrance to Domaine Thomson. Studios from NZ$291.

Restaurants

Cardrona Hotel

Don’t miss this hotel located on the pass between Wānaka and Queenstown, to enjoy a perfect lamb shoulder in one of New Zealand’s true institutions.

Kika

In Wānaka, Kika blends excellent fine dining with modern sharing plates – its crayfish mole and roasted brassicas are remarkable.

Mora

Just outside Arrowtown, the winery at Mora has a fabulous terrace and excellent, colourful food. Great for lunch.

Activities

Hike to a glacier

The walk from Raspberry Flat to Rob Roy glacier in Mt Aspiring national park is one of the best short walks in the world. You can do it yourself, or alternatively Eco Wānaka provides transport, lunch and an excellent guided hike for NZ$420 per adult.

Lakes District Museum & Gallery

Located in Arrowtown and filled with dioramas and artefacts, the museum offers a fantastic insight into the region’s history, with a particular focus on European and Chinese gold miners (NZ$14).

Scenic flight & cruise

Southern Alps Air offers a spectacular four-hour day tour from Wānaka that crosses the Southern Alps for a scenic cruise along the 16-kilometre length of Milford Sound (pictured, p88; NZ$749 per adult). It’s a remarkable way to get a sense of the geography that influences Otago’s wines.

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If Sauvignon Blanc built New Zealand’s reputation, Pinot Noir is where it intends to cement its fine wine credentials. That much was clear at the industry’s flagship event, Pinot Noir New Zealand 2025 (PN25), held in Christchurch earlier this year – the first since 2017 after a pandemic-related hiatus.

Over three days, producers presented their wares for debate, tasting and scrutiny by local and international critics and trade. The verdict? The wines are more exciting than ever, but the category faces a defining moment: push harder for global recognition or risk fading into the background of the fine wine conversation.

Many international attendees were struck by the stylistic shift. The glossy, oak-sweetened Pinots of the early days are largely gone, replaced by wines of greater finesse, freshness and site transparency.

‘There’s a real sense of confidence now,’ noted consultant and DWWA judge Madeleine Stenwreth MW. ‘Producers don’t feel the need to push so hard to prove themselves. They are showing much more place, much more vineyard.’

‘The interplay of site and clone is clearer, inspiring a wave of single-vineyard wines’

Emma Jenkins MW

Winds of change

New Zealand’s hallmark has long been vibrant fruit purity and consistency, with Pinots typically marrying aromatic, juicy red and black fruits with savoury depth and natural freshness. While wine drinkers have enjoyed that consistency, some critics wonder whether it has limited the country’s evolution.

Burgundy expert and author Jasper Morris MW, visiting in late 2024, observed: ‘Not a lot has really changed between my various visits. Certainly people are more competent and the understanding of locations is better, but have there really been that many new people? You can’t keep saying the same story, as the unfortunate reality is this will not capture the world’s interest.’

With more than 5,600ha under vine, Pinot Noir is New Zealand’s second most planted grape, the key red variety from Wairarapa south. Central Otago, despite having just 4.9% of the nation’s vineyards, produces nearly 30% of its Pinot Noir.

Few countries boast such a range of cool-climate terroirs and when tasted side-by-side, the regional and sub-regional differences are increasingly distinct. The challenge – and opportunity – is how to communicate this diversity in markets where Burgundy, Oregon and increasingly Germany dominate the conversation. Internationally, New Zealand is no longer a newcomer.

Consumers may recognise established names but often fail to explore beyond them. While exports have been falling, after reaching a peak in 2018, and global market visibility remains a challenge, those closer to home know that styles have indeed broadened. Winemakers are embracing differences rather than smoothing them away.

The past decade has brought a burst of natural and ‘nouveau’ wines, small-batch experiments and even the occasional blend. A more nuanced, site-responsive approach has emerged, prioritising terroir over winemaking showmanship. As vines have matured, the interplay of site and clone is clearer, inspiring a wave of single-vineyard wines.

Whether these are genuinely superior or simply distinct is still open to debate, but this shift from technical ambition to authentic site expression marks an evolution.

‘New Zealand Pinot now seems to be more nuanced, freer of the technical obsession that once led many wines into the same flavour space,’ said UK critic Jamie Goode at PN25.

Generational change is also reshaping the landscape. Young winemakers and new entrants, often running side hustles or small projects, are pushing boundaries with an increasing focus on organic and biodynamic farming and low intervention styles.

Many rely on fruit from premium growers or shared production spaces, reflecting both the high capital costs and collaborative spirit of the new wave.

Decanter New Zealand Pinot Noir vintage rating

New Zealand’s geography can make vintage generalisations difficult. Some vintages – 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2024 – have had more uniform conditions, but it always pays to check by individual region.

2024: *****

Lower yields this year but exceptional quality; warm, dry conditions and cool nights. Balanced, ageworthy wines.

2023: ****

Cyclone Gabrielle challenged the northeastern coast. Tricky year for many, though some good wines, if unlikely to be long-cellaring. Much more solid across the South Island. Decent yields.

2022: ***

Solid yields. For most, a very humid February was aided by a drier autumn: look for fastidious producers. An excellent year for Central Otago.

2021: *****

Early, very dry season. Low yields but very good quality across both islands.

2020: *****

The ‘lockdown’ vintage; fortunately, Mother Nature was smiling. Excellent quality, low yields.

New Zealand’s defining wine?

Yet despite the quality and diversity, Pinot Noir hasn’t achieved the global breakthrough enjoyed by Sauvignon Blanc. Plantings have fallen by almost 200ha in the past decade, exports and overall domestic wine consumption are both falling, and Pinot Gris now outsells Pinot Noir overseas.

Rising production costs add further challenges. Visibility is a perennial hurdle and limited quantities of the best wines make them difficult to f ind in key markets such as the US and UK.

As PN25 keynote speaker Eric Asimov cautioned: ‘Potential and possibility don’t create awareness. You need people on the ground – importers, distributors – championing these wines.’

Still, there’s energy in the air and a sense of momentum. Both 2024 and 2025 delivered high-quality vintages across the regions, and most producers are driven by site and purpose rather than scale. Their wines increasingly reflect that authenticity.

At 89, Central Otago pioneer Alan Brady (who first planted grapes in Gibbston valley in 1981 and has just built his third winery, Wild Irishman), remains upbeat.

‘It’s Pinot Noir that’s shown us where to go,’ he says. ‘If we’re wise, we won’t let the marketplace dictate style but continue to develop our empathy and understanding of our vineyards.’

That balance of humility and dedication is serving New Zealand well. Great Pinot Noir takes time, and within little more than a generation, the country has established an impressive degree of quality with the promise of more to come.

For drinkers around the world, the message is simple: New Zealand Pinot Noir has never been more compelling – it’s nuanced, diverse, deeply rooted in place and increasingly ageworthy. If producers maintain their quality focus, tell their stories with conviction and build allies in key markets, Pinot Noir could yet become New Zealand’s defining wine.

Around New Zealand’s Pinot Noir regions

Wairarapa

Small but significant region, home to pioneering, world-class wineries. Three sub-regions: Martinborough, Gladstone and Masterton. Pinot accounts for roughly half of plantings (slightly more in Martinborough). Devigorating wind and deep gravelly soils produce low yields and thicker skins; wines are aromatic and structured, with savoury complexity. Key area for Abel, the ‘gumboot clone’ said to have been propagated from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s La Tâche vineyard.

Marlborough

The shift from stony valley floor sites to the rolling, clay-based hillsides of the Southern Valleys, alongside clonal refinement, has led to major quality gains. Exciting wines are emerging from the cooler, drier, more exposed Awatere. While many archetypal wines remain, there’s also good value via the larger producers. Wines are typically fragrant, red-fruited and midweight with fine tannins. Key area for sparkling and rosé.

Nelson

Enjoys similar sunshine hours to Marlborough but with more sheltering hills, producing perfumed, expressively fruity wines. The Moutere’s clay soils lend silky tannins and supple texture.

North Canterbury

Early vineyards were planted near South Island’s biggest city Christchurch, but recent decades have seen a northward shift to the drier, more sheltered rolling hills of Waipara and the inland limestone soils of Waikari. Wines are perfumed and spicy with red/black fruits, and supple, textural structure.

Central Otago

Pinot Noir is the region’s flagship variety, just exceeding 80% of plantings. Six distinct sub-regions – Alexandra, Bannockburn, Bendigo, Gibbston, Lowburn/Pisa and Wanaka – sit on quartz/schist/granite and glacial soils. Aromatic, supple wines with vivid red or black fruits, spice and dried herbs, supported by notable acid/tannin spines.

See Emma’s pick from the latest New Zealand Pinot Noir releases

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With his laconic wit and no-nonsense style, English-born Kevin Judd could easily be taken for a Kiwi. After decades in New Zealand, he has their straight talk down to a tee.

Judd, founder and winemaker of Greywacke in Marlborough, New Zealand, was in London with his wife and business partner Kimberley Judd to present the first-ever vertical tasting of Chardonnay wines to take place outside their winery.

From zero to world fame

The Judds are usually associated with Sauvignon Blanc, for good reason. It is their chief grape variety at Greywacke and made Kevin’s name. As the founding winemaker at Cloudy Bay, established in 1985 by David Hohnen, Kevin is a central figure in New Zealand’s wine history.

He helped inaugurate the country’s stellar ascent as a winemaking nation with Cloudy Bay’s pioneering style of Sauvignon Blanc in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

After 25 years at Cloudy Bay, Kevin founded Greywacke in 2009. ‘When I left Cloudy Bay, I had no money, no vineyard and no winery,’ he says. ‘But I turned 50 and I had some experience. A guy called Ivan Sutherland tapped me on the shoulder.’

Sutherland, who had been the viticulturist at Cloudy Bay, owned farmland and had established Dog Point Wines. ‘In 2009, there was the global financial crisis and there were spare grapes,’ Kevin continues.

‘Sutherland had heard we were thinking of starting our own thing, so we set up a business partnership. They also provided space in their winery. We still buy 70% of our fruit from the Sutherland family. We went from zero to exporting wine to 55 countries in the world. 95% of our production is exported.’

Chardonnay in the spotlight

Six Chardonnays, from the vintages 2010, 2014, 2017, 2019, 2021 and the current release, 2023, were lined up. ‘Chardonnay is quite a small part of our production,’ says Kevin.

‘We believe that Chardonnay in Marlborough can make fantastic wine, but it lives in the humongous shadow of Sauvignon Blanc.’

Most of the wines are made from the Mendoza clone of Chardonnay. ‘It has big berries and tiny berries in the same bunch, about as small as match heads; it is what the French call millerandage and we call hen-and-chicken. It is a clone that gives us immense concentration and natural acidity,” he adds.

Even when the fruit is fully ripe, the acidity is strident, which explains the alcohol level, the full citrus expression and the concentration of the wines. The wines also contain some clone 95 and a far smaller portion of the newer 548 clone.

High in the sky

‘We are at the latitude of 41.5° South,’ Kevin explains. Transposed to the northern hemisphere, he exlpains, this latitude ‘runs right through Italy and Spain’. In fact, it runs right between Rome and Naples in Italy and just a little north of Barcelona in Spain.

‘The sun is very high in the sky, but because we are surrounded by ocean, completely maritime, it very rarely goes above 30°C. On a really hot day, it goes to 32°C, but the night temperatures then are usually around 15°C. We get this incredible natural acidity and really intense fruit flavours,’ he says.

‘We get young winemakers from Chile and South Africa coming to discover how to make Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, but it is our climate that is so unique.’ He’s right: the sunshine and briskness of Marlborough is on full display in the wines.

Consistent style

The climate is indeed key to the style. All the wines are luminous, bright and punchy, with potent alcohols of 14% and above. In terms of winemaking, Kevin outlines his core elements for Chardonnay.

All fruit is hand-picked and whole-bunch pressed. If there is sedimentation at all, it is light. Most juice goes straight to barrel.

‘All of these wines had fairly heavy solid contents,’ he notes. All the ferments are spontaneous. ‘The great thing about wild fermentation is that it is a microbiological zoo,’ he explains, believing that the diverse yeast population at the beginning of the ferment lends complexity to his wines, which all go through full malolactic conversion.

All the wines are fermented in small French, ‘quite heavily toasted’ barrels made by the Tonnellerie de Mercurey.

‘I like Chardonnay, I like oak, it’s just like tomatoes and basil, a match made in heaven,’ Kevin quips, but notes that there never was more than 20% new oak.

Ageing gracefully

Throughout the years, he has held onto these principles and made no stylistic changes to the winemaking. The only change was in 2019 when he decided to age the wines for 11 rather than 18 months. He emphasises that this was a purely logistical decision, so barrels would not be empty for half a year.

The only reason the Judds did not show their initial 2009 Chardonnay vintage is due to its rarity. Kimberley explains that they kept fewer reserves at the beginning.

But the 2010, a favourite of the Judds, just shone. Having tasted these pristine mature vintages, the new wines, impressive in their own right, cried out for bottle age.

And while two debates were settled a long time ago, this splendid vertical reinforced without a doubt that New World wines evolve and mature beautifully – and do so under screwcap.

Greywacke Chardonnay: Six to try

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Australian Securities Exchange-listed Santana Minerals said in June that it was pressing ahead with its NZ$4.4bn Bendigo-Ophir gold mine project, and would lodge an application under the New Zealand government’s new Fast Track Approvals Act.

The proposed site lies within an ‘outstanding natural landscape’, a designation intended to protect the unique environment and scenery that underpins one of the country’s flagship wine regions and tourism destinations.

The 2024 act allows ‘nationally significant’ projects to be fast-tracked through an expert panel, with final decisions made by ministers.

Critics of the fast-track law argue the new process could weaken scrutiny, sideline local voices and remove broader public input, potentially increasing environmental risks.

Central Otago Winegrowers Association (COWA) has written to New Zealand’s prime minister, Christopher Luxon, requesting it be included in the process as an affected party.

‘Central Otago has built a globally respected brand founded on premium wine production, authentic visitor experiences and environmental stewardship,’ said COWA.

‘These industries are long-term, value-generating investments. The risk of environmental degradation, reputational harm and disruption to this workforce must be weighed seriously.

‘The expected returns from the mine… stand in stark contrast to the enduring, compounding economic value provided by wine and tourism. This imbalance raises serious questions about the strategic benefit to New Zealand.’

The gold mine project’s scale is significant – an open pit nearly a kilometre wide and 200 metres deep, with additional pits and a tailings dam.

Santana insisted environmental safeguards will be robust. It said in June that several key ecological reports were in progress, and that environmental considerations and community engagement are central to its planning.

However, there has been local public opposition to the new gold mine project, led by groups such as Sustainable Tarras. Concerns range from possible contamination of water and long-term ecological harm to the impact on regional tourism and damage to the area’s fine wine identity.

The Central Otago District Council said in June that it would be challenging to adequately review the proposed project under the fast-track act’s compressed timeframes, reported local media outlet Wānaka App. It said the council had also warned Santana subsidiary Matakanui Gold over breaches to the district plan, although it added the firm was working with authorities to address the issues.

Santana said its Bendigo-Ophir gold mine plans will generate ‘an average of 364 direct jobs and about 500 indirect jobs during operations’, plus NZ$900m in taxes and royalties.

The group recently acquired 2,880 hectares (ha) of land for the project for NZ$25m, subject to Overseas Investment Office approval, with gold production targeted by late 2026.

Despite local concerns, Damian Spring, CEO of Santana Minerals, said in June, ‘For many of our team this is our home too, and our focus is on listening, refining and working together to build a project that Central Otago can be proud of for generations to come.’

Winegrowers have warned of the need for proper oversight and said they are determined to ensure the voices of Central Otago’s wine and wider community are not ignored. 

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If strangers with wildly different histories and paradigms set out to complete a task together, what would happen?

This abstract thought experiment has been formally conducted in France and New Zealand since 2006.

France, and Burgundy specifically, has been producing some of the world’s most sought-after wine for two millennia. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay were born in Burgundy, and Cistercian monks created and refined the concept of terroir there.

New Zealand, meanwhile, is the youngest major wine-producing country in the world. Winemakers there are hailed for modernising the concept of terroir by infusing it with Māori values such as kaitiakitanga and tūrangawaewae, which links sustainability, and a deep human connection to place.

And we all know what they did with Savvy B…

Despite the stark differences, the global wine community is intimate, and Burgundy and New Zealand have been connected for decades.

How it started

‘In 2006, Sophie Confuron of Domaine Jean-Jacques Confuron came down to Central Otago for the first time,’ says Nick Mills (below), winemaker and general manager at his family estate, Rippon Vineyard, recalling the start of this co-fermentation of viticultures.

He knew Confuron well and had spent years in Burgundy himself studying viticulture in Beaune and working as a cellar rat at Domaine Jean-Jacques Confuron, Nicolas Potel, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and others.

‘We’d asked her to come down and present at the 2006 Central Otago Pinot Noir Celebration, on how the Cistercians’ beliefs and practices had advanced the notion of terroir,’ he explains.

The journey inspired Confuron to propose a student exchange between Central Otago and Burgundy.

The first official Central Otago Burgundy Exchange (COBEX) occurred in 2007, with a growers association and college in each region coordinating logistics.

Every year, wineries in each region agree to host stagiaires (interns) from abroad, providing them with the opportunity to experience a harvest and become immersed in the hosting region’s approach to farming, wine and culture.

The COBEX experience has had ripple effects on each region’s approach to viticulture and human culture.

Influence on viticulture

Stagiaires from Central Otago head to Burgundy to, ‘gain insight from the centuries of attention to specific vineyard sites, and the enormous history and respect for tradition there that a person from a very young country like New Zealand cannot fully appreciate until being fully immersed in it,’ says Carolyn Murray (below), general manager of the Central Otago Winegrowers Association.

Conversely, Burgundians arrive in Otago to discover what it’s like to work in a region devoted to fine wine, but without ‘detailed geographical and political overlays, and therefore free of the sort of constraints they have grown used to,’ Murray explains.

For Ben Leen, winemaker at Amisfield Winery, one of the stagiaires who descended on Burgundy in 2022, the experience was a revelation.

Feet on soil

‘Walking the vineyards with the owners, and being in places I’d only ever heard of discussed in hushed tones, like Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, gave me a deep understanding of the tapestry and layers of terroir,’ he says.

‘We would open wines from the parcel that we had just walked for context, and I understood everything at a much more micro level. It helped me approach terroir very differently when I returned,’ he adds.

Leen’s method shifted, and he began seeing a season in its totality, while allowing different sections of the vineyard to ‘speak’ to him.

‘I began to see how every square metre has a different personality, and a different way of responding and performing,’ Leen says.

‘No-one in Burgundy talks about pH or residual sugar. That was so revelatory. The knowledge and devotion to science is there, but the understanding of wine seemed deeper.’

Influence on human terroir

While Burgundy’s effect on Central Otago’s approach to physical terroir is arguably more pronounced, the opposite is true for human culture.

‘We are just floating in this vast ocean in New Zealand,’ says Mills. ‘There’s an incredible freedom of spirit. You can imagine almost anything happening. In Burgundy, it’s much more insular, with centuries of history.’

Cistercians built walls, created hierarchies and codified degrees, essentially, of holiness from site to site.

In Otago, the physical remoteness of the country imbues the people with a deep connection to their own personal plot of land, Mills argues, but also with the freedom to farm, cultivate and perceive it as they want to.

‘Central Otago is so free and youthful in comparison to Burgundy, and the stagiaires who come here to experience it return home with a new sense of openness,’ Mills says.

Close connections

The regions have also found opportunities to support each other emotionally and financially through their close-knit exchange.

‘Central Otago Winegrowers made a donation of €5,000 to the Association for the Restoration of the Abbaye de St-Vivant, where the very notion of terroir was seeded,’ says Murray.

‘And after the Christchurch earthquake, our friends in Burgundy sent rare, old and large format bottles of their wine to New Zealand, which we offered at auction and raised over NZ$40,000 for earthquake appeal.’

In practice, the thought experiment has yielded arguably better wine through a more precise approach to viticulture, and a more open approach to human culture.

It also fermented a long and unexpectedly symbiotic friendship, with impacts that ripple well beyond the world of wine.

The Central Otago Burgundy Exchange: the facts

The concept for the exchange was born in 2006.

It has been conducted every year since, with a two-year pause during Covid-19.

More than 100 stagiaires have travelled on the exchange.

COBEX is run by a grower association and an agricultural college on each side.

In Burgundy: Mosaïque Bourgogne International and the CFPPA de Beaune.

In New Zealand: Central Otago Winegrowers Association and the Otago Polytechnic Central Campus.

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Built in conjunction with local geospatial experts MapHQ, and based upon AMW’s original Wine Map of Marlborough, the freely available digital platform overlays topography, temperature, rainfall and soil data onto high-resolution photography, accompanied by commentary from winemakers and viticulturists. The result is a fascinating exploration of how terroir shapes style and variety across the region’s sprawling patchwork of subregions, providing professionals and enthusiasts alike with an entirely new way to engage with the region.

Users can toggle between individual layers, tracing how cool night temperatures snake up the Awatere, comparing rainfall totals, and discovering why Sauvignon Blanc from Seaview differs from that of Dillon’s Point, or how Omaka’s Pinot Noir contrasts with that of its neighbour, Brancott. It’s equal parts atlas, climatology lesson and wine guide.

The map also deepens understanding of Marlborough’s growing subregional identities. Once simply divided into three main zones – Wairau, Southern Valleys and Awatere – it has become increasingly evident that this neat segmentation no longer reflects the complexity on the ground. AMW’s cartography uses water catchment areas, climate data and soils to define three macro regions and eight subregions, allowing users to drill down into the vineyard-level detail that is increasingly referenced on premium labels.

AMW chair Sophie Parker-Thomson MW called the map ‘a quantum leap in communicating Marlborough’s diverse wine story.

‘For the first time, we are offering a dynamic, visual exploration of how our distinctive subregions and microclimates stylistically contribute to our wines. It’s an indispensable resource for anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of what makes the Marlborough wine region, and the AMW certified wines produced here, so exceptional,’ she added.

Beyond its marketing potential, the map – now freely accessible on the AMW website – arms consumers with a user-friendly tool to explore the region’s quality-focused producers. It helps distinguish those telling the subregional story from the more generic, brand-driven offerings, and is expected to evolve as new data layers and vintage overlays are added, rewarding repeat visits driven by curious wine lovers.

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David Hohnen calls it the ‘eyebrow effect’. ‘You watch them shoot up as soon as they put their nose in a glass,’ he says, chuckling.

Back in 1985, the Cloudy Bay founder leveraged that instant reaction to gain a foothold in UK independent retail for his inaugural vintage.

As savvy a storyteller as he is a winemaker, Hohnen also sent samples abroad with a jar of Marlborough green-lipped mussels, telling recipients to get a corkscrew and some fresh, crusty bread.

The UK market took off and soon eyebrows were lifting worldwide.

Scroll down to see notes and scores of six brilliant Cloudy Bay wines

Cloudy Bay’s story began in 1983, when Hohnen, an Australian winemaker at Cape Mentelle in Margaret River, encountered the eyebrow effect himself.

Visiting New Zealand, winemakers left him a bottle of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc that ‘blew my socks off’. The following year, he sought out its source.

Flying into Marlborough, he recalls looking across the summer-brown hillsides and thinking, ‘Yes, this is the place.’ His initial plan was a fly-in, fly-out winemaking venture but that quickly changed.

A Marlborough legend

Convincing his Cape Mentelle backers – his brother Mark and business partner Simon Fraser – to borrow NZ$1 million at an eyewatering 23.5% interest rate, Hohnen purchased land on Jacksons Road, built a winery and hired a young Australian winemaker named Kevin Judd to oversee production.

The first vintage, in 1985, was made with 40 tonnes of purchased fruit trucked to Selaks’ Gisborne winery, where Judd was working.

From the start, Cloudy Bay set a benchmark for its Sauvignon Blanc, defined by vibrant tropical fruit, racy acidity and a signature pungency.

‘We produced wine without compromising on quality,’ Judd explains. ‘There were never any questions about that. We also delivered consistency across those early years. David had also just won two Jimmy Watson trophies, and the wine world trusted him.’

As demand surged, Champagne house Veuve Clicquot took an interest, investing in Cloudy Bay in 1990 after purchasing a nearby vineyard that became known as the Widow’s Block (a tribute to Madame Clicquot), now a key source of fruit.

This partnership ultimately led to full ownership by the LVMH group in 2003, unlocking investment and global reach while maintaining Cloudy Bay’s hands-off, quality-first approach. In 2014, the winery expanded into Central Otago, home of its flagship Pinot Noir, Te Wāhi.

Cloudy Bay: A timeline

1985: Cloudy Bay established

1990: Veuve Clicquot takes a stake

1992: First Pelorus méthode traditionnelle release

1994: First Marlborough Pinot Noir release

2000: First Te Koko release (1996 vintage)

2003: LVMH purchases Cloudy Bay outright

2009: Cloudy Bay begins to explore Central Otago

2014: Purchase of the Northburn vineyard and leasing of the Calvert vineyard, both in Central Otago

2016: First release of Te Wāhi Pinot Noir (2014 vintage)

‘Change but no change’

Four decades on, much remains as it was.

Sauvignon Blanc is still Cloudy Bay’s cornerstone – both the classic bottling and the wild-fermented Te Koko – alongside Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and the Pelorus sparkling range.

Winemaking director Nikolai St George (pictured, above) leads a passionate, focused team, with technical and sustainable development senior director Jim White observing that ‘the winemaking approach is bigger than one person; any change happens in incremental steps’.

The evolution of Te Koko exemplifies this ethos – once a bold, funky, barrel-driven experiment, it has been slowly refined with the addition of concrete tulip tanks, foudres and shorter ferments, bringing greater precision to its wild-ferment profile.

St George believes that ‘New Zealand is good at understanding something and then making it our own’, echoing Hohnen’s view that Cloudy Bay blends Old and New World influences.

‘I’ve always felt grateful to have the Old World’s knowledge and the New World’s ability to discard traditions that didn’t work,’ he says.

‘At Cloudy Bay, there’s change, but no change. The winemaking remains hands-off, the place still feels right. But LVMH has brought investment that we could never have imagined back then.’

Sustainability is now a key focus, including a winery rooftop solar system, a carbon-reducing autonomous tractor and, thus far, 190ha of vineyards farmed without herbicides.

A social initiative supports Pacific Islander seasonal workers with entrepreneurship mentoring and interest-free loans, reflecting a deeper commitment to the people behind the wine.

Looking forward, Cloudy Bay’s focus is refining its Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir, expanding Chardonnay plantings and maintaining the quality-driven ethos that has defined it for 40 years.

Cloudy Bay’s Marlborough vineyards

702ha in the Wairau and Southern valleys: 524ha of Sauvignon Blanc, 102ha of Pinot Noir and 76ha of Chardonnay. There are also about 550ha of Cloudy Bay-owned or directly managed/leased grower blocks and about 150ha of grower blocks managed to Cloudy Bay guidelines.

Style pioneer

Cloudy Bay’s trailblazing success in the UK in the late 1980s undoubtedly helped propel the Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc category forward, paving the way for greater investment and increased global recognition.

‘Cloudy Bay benefited from its reputation coming from winemakers, not marketers,’ says Judd. ‘David’s credibility certainly drove international interest.’ Today, Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc accounts for more than 70% of New Zealand’s wine exports.

Hohnen, now 75, first revisited Cloudy Bay in 2022 after almost 20 years away. ‘I almost felt a sense of vertigo,’ he admits. ‘I was so surprised by the degree of emotion I felt.’

Reflecting on the early days, he muses: ‘I had a three-year plan, driven by my methodical nature. Never would I have thought to look 40 years ahead.’

Few wines have shaped a country’s global reputation like Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc did for New Zealand.

As the winery celebrates its 40th anniversary, it’s a moment to reflect upon an extraordinary journey, and perhaps to wonder what the next 40 years will bring.

Celebrating 40 years in style 

At the end of February, Cloudy Bay celebrated its 40th anniversary with a three-day event for 40 international guests, who were treated to a series of tastings, vineyard and winery activities, and long lunches and dinners that showcased Cloudy Bay’s current and library releases, alongside a fabulous array of local produce. 

The finale was a 40th birthday celebration for 200 on the winery lawn, at which founder David Hohnen gave a moving and amusing speech before guests danced the night away under the A Pelorus rosé tower Marlborough stars.

The Jenkins pick: Cloudy Bay across the decades

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Think of New Zealand white wine and Sauvignon Blanc most likely comes to mind.

But now might be the perfect time to reconsider, for New Zealand Chardonnay has never been better, steadily gaining recognition for its balance of fruit purity, bright acidity and silky complexity.

Chardonnay accounts for just 9% of vineyard area and less than 2% of exports – compared to Sauvignon Blanc’s dominating 80% and 85% – according to the New Zealand Winegrowers Annual Report 2024.

But with near-perfect growing conditions and increasingly refined winemaking, Chardonnay remains one of the country’s best-kept secrets, offering quality – and value – that are worth seeking out.

Scroll down for notes and scores of 12 of New Zealand’s best Chardonnay

New Zealand’s first Chardonnays likely emerged in the 1950s, though records are unclear. The variety gained traction in the 1980s with the bold, buttery, heavily oaked styles that were popular at the time.

By the 1990s, it was the country’s most-planted white variety and winemakers were increasingly getting to grips with more sophisticated production techniques.

However, the global Anything But Chardonnay movement and meteoric rise of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc soon saw it eclipsed.

Today, Chardonnay is the country’s second most-planted white variety, slightly ahead of Pinot Gris, though plantings have remained static over the past decade.

A cool customer

Nonetheless, Chardonnay continues to be beloved by producers. It is the focus of the Aotearoa Chardonnay Symposium, an annual Hawke’s Bay event featuring local and international experts.

The 2024 keynote speakers included Burgundy authority Jasper Morris MW, and writer and California specialist Elaine Chukan Brown.

She praised New Zealand Chardonnay as: ‘One of its most exciting varieties, offering an electric acidity akin to a high wattage lightbulb wearing a diffusing lens: elevated and stimulating with the edges softened to pleasurable brightness.’

New Zealand’s ideal growing conditions contribute to these characteristics. Kumeu River winemaker Michael Brajkovich MW, whose own wines have famously bested top Burgundies in international blind tastings, argues that New Zealand’s cool climate and long growing season is especially well-suited for high quality Chardonnay production.

‘There is nowhere in New Zealand that has a truly hot, or even warm, climate,’ he explains. ‘We are all dealing in cool climate viticulture with a variety that is inherently well suited to it, and better suited than just about any other for making quality dry white wine.’

Steve Smith MW, co-owner of Pyramid Valley and Smith & Sheth, concurs, ‘We can get the grapes properly ripe at 12.5-13.5% alcohol. They don’t get overripe because it’s not hot – and at full ripeness we also have an energy and natural acidity, which most other parts of the New World and many parts of Europe cannot achieve anymore because it is getting warmer.’

A great New Zealand Chardonnay, he notes, will be quite complex rather than overtly fruity, with delicious ripeness and a sense of energy and freshness.

Evolution of style

The complexity is further enhanced by evolving winemaking techniques. In recent years, winemakers have dialed back smaller, newer oak in favour of older, larger formats or concrete and clay vessels.

This helps to highlight fruit purity and minerality, giving more linear, precise wines. Wild fermentation, extended lees maturation, and intentional reduction have become common, resulting in more textured, complex wines with a stronger sense of place.

Brajkovich observes: ‘Whereas in the past many NZ Chardonnays were very similar, based on the model of Côte de Beaune, we are now seeing more diversity of style, with less oak, more zest and greater drinkability when young.’

Single vineyard expressions are increasingly common, aided by the benefit of detailed understanding of clonal selection. ‘We now possess a collection of different selections of Chardonnay that complement each other,’ says Smith. ‘You can do a lot of the crafting of the wine this way, for example balancing fruit expression or acidity.’

Demand and diversity

Although total plantings have remained static, consumer interest in New Zealand Chardonnay is quietly growing. Some producers, such as Cloudy Bay and Isabel Estate in Marlborough, are struggling to meet demand and are expanding Chardonnay plantings.

Despite its limited production, the variety offers genuine depth and quality. It was difficult to narrow down the accompanying wine selection for this article (see below).

New Zealand Chardonnay might currently be overshadowed in a crowded global marketplace, but it delivers outstanding quality at a fraction of the price of many Burgundies, Californian Chardonnays, or even Australian counterparts, making it an exciting prospect for savvy Chardonnay lovers.

Around the regions: Where to find the best NZ Chardonnay

Chardonnay is grown across New Zealand with all regions producing genuinely exciting wines. From The Landing’s sleek examples revitalising Northland wine to Central Otago’s minerally, precise styles, each area has distinctive characteristics.

Here are the key regions…

Hawke’s Bay

The country’s second-largest wine region is a hotspot for premium Chardonnay, with over 1,000ha planted. There’s a temperate maritime climate and kaleidoscopic soils courtesy of four river systems.

Varied subregions – ranging from cooler coastal to warmer inland sites such as the Gimblett Gravels – produce rich, structured wines with yellow stonefruit, citrus and creamy nut notes.

Wairarapa

Just 62ha planted, but excellent quality with high-profile producers. Long dry summers and cool nights enhance elegance, while the deep free-draining soils contribute texture and minerality.

Expect ripe lemon, white peach, tangy acid and savoury depth.

Marlborough

Best known for Sauvignon Blanc, though Chardonnay is increasingly being grown in the clay-rich soils of the Southern Valleys subregion.

Grapefruit, stonefruit and red apple with crisp acidity are typical; palate structure is more linear than Hawke’s Bay. Chardonnay plays a key role in the region’s distinctive sparkling wines. 1,083ha planted.

Nelson

High sunshine, protective hills and a cooling maritime influence yield intense fruit expression – think stone fruit, melon, orchard fruit and citrus – with crisp structure.

The clay soils of the Moutere Hills add depth and silky texture, whilst alluvial Waimea Plains wines are fine and fragrant. 109ha planted.

North Canterbury

The long, dry growing season, cool nights and often limestone-rich soils produce complex, structured Chardonnays with vibrant acidity. Fine citrus, white peach and flinty minerality are typical.

Just 99ha are planted here, but top producers have put the region on the Chardonnay map for seriously ageworthy wines.

Central Otago & Waitaki

World-renowned for Pinot Noir, but Chardonnay plantings (92ha) are steadily increasing for still and sparkling wines. The dry, semi-continental climate gives excellent tension, fresh acidity and concentrated flavour.

Expect bright citrus, white peach and nectarine, green apple, white flowers and saline, oyster shell minerality. The tiny North Otago region of Waitaki Valley (just 6ha) is gaining attention for limestone-driven fragrant, zesty wines.

Gisbourne

At 582ha, Chardonnay is the region’s dominant variety, and its high sunshine, mild climate and rich, alluvial soils deliver aromatic, lushly fruited wines with good body and texture.

Many wines are made for early-drinking pleasure but the best mature well with good complexity.

Top New Zealand Chardonnay: 12 to try

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Ben Glover, 52, is the leading force behind The Coterie in Marlborough, New Zealand. In this collaborative space he makes the fruit of his family vineyards into the wines of his brands Zephyr, Bob Short for Kate, Massey Dacta and Spoke – the latter is a co-project with UK-based merchant Liam Steevenson MW.

While Ben’s story neatly traces the rise of Marlborough as the powerhouse of New Zealand’s wine industry, he has now come full circle. With The Coterie, he has, ‘established a place for the next generation to come make their wine, rock the world and show off Marlborough in a provocative and new light. Without barriers and with an open collective collaborative culture,’ he says.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores for wines from Ben Glover

Paying it forward

The Coterie is a culmination of sorts, and a realisation. ‘Before Covid, I just wanted to do everything myself,’ Ben says. ‘But you really can’t, you’ve got to let go and start giving.’ By this he means giving youngsters the same opportunities he enjoyed as Marlborough – New Zealand’s biggest wine region – grew rapidly.

New Zealand went from 2,600 hectares in 1981 to almost 42,000ha in 2023, according to figures from the Wine Institute of New Zealand. From this total, 71% of those hectares are in Marlborough, where Sauvignon Blanc now accounts for 81% of plantings, according to The New Zealand Winegrowers Vineyard Report 2023.

‘All growers and business owners are brand owners who need to look after “Brand Marlborough”,’ says Ben. ‘That means paying it forward; that’s what the pioneers did. We’re now at a phase where Marlborough desperately needs those again.’ The Coterie is intended to be part of this – and the Glovers’ farming background is key to the idea of expressing the land and region.

Farming families

Ben’s earliest memories are following his father ‘in the long grass, trying to keep up with him, feeding our cows’ when the family were dairy farmers in Blenheim, Marlborough. As the oldest of four children, he learned to drive a tractor at age 10. ‘Just good, honest New Zealand rural life,’ he says.

Farming friends had done well with a relatively new crop and so in 1988, 15 years after the first vines had been planted in the region, Ben’s parents, Wendy and Owen Glover, also planted 8ha of vines and switched from dairy to grape farming.

‘That’s where it really started,’ says Ben. ‘One minute I was out with cattle, the next I was weeding these horrible vines that just kept wanting to grow.’

Those first 8ha were Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Semillon, grown as a cash crop to be sold as sparkling base wines to Australia. But the family had also branched out into garlic and deer farming. Ben describes his father as ‘a pretty diversified farmer, entrepreneurial. It shaped how I see the land. I’m not a very good scientist. Chemistry doesn’t excite me, it’s very much hands-on, observational.’

This is why, eventually, he hit on oenology and viticulture after neither law nor accounting held his attention. Ben discovered he, ‘really liked wine, the making side of it. Winemaking can live in the grey space of your brain; it does not have to be black and white,’ he says.

Riding the wave

On graduating, Ben thought he would take over the home farm, but his father – who was selling grapes to a certain Brent Marris, now of Marisco and The Ned fame – was in no mood to retire. ‘Luckily,’ Glover notes. Marris was ‘the dynamic young winemaker for Oyster Bay’, who had started his own side project in 1994.

That side project became Wither Hills. Marris offered the new graduate an opportunity to come on board his new project in 1998.

‘We had a fantastic time,’ Ben remembers. ‘We grew the Wither Hills brand. The first six years it was family-owned, then it was bought by Lion Nathan, a large multi-beverage company. Those years were brilliant,’ he adds, citing the dynamism of a changing industry.

‘It was just like riding a big Malibu surfboard on an endless break. I had a really cool, good mentor in Brent Marris – in winemaking and blending, but equally in selling wine and building relationships in the marketplace. For me it was brilliant to see, learn and understand all that.’

Learning curves

With these years of on-the-job training under his belt, 2007 became a pivotal year for Ben with two key developments. Upon the departure of Marris from Wither Hills, Ben became chief winemaker for the company and also started his own side project. He called it Zephyr, named after the classic Ford motorcar model, a family heirloom.

The Zephyr wines were made from the fruit on the Glover family farm, from the Kerseley vineyard which later became the Kerseley and Brawn Vineyards in the Dillons Point subregion of Marlborough where the deep silts lend a more savoury edge to the fruit. Parents Wendy and Owen did much to keep it rolling along.

Ben did this with his employers’ full permission. Increasingly, however, things at Wither Hills ‘got more and more corporate’ and so he switched to a head winemaker role at then family-owned Mud House in 2012. But when it was sold to Accolade in 2013, Ben was once again caught in a corporate culture.

‘It was pretty cut-throat,’ he remembers. ‘They were not too interested in longevity. It was a frustrating time. I left in 2016 and went live with Zephyr and the family business.’

A different focus

‘I haven’t really looked back,’ Ben admits. ‘Corporate structure tends to subdue or kill innovation because there’s so much pressure to deliver, but looking back, I took good discipline from that.’

The experience was crucial because he knows both sides of the industry: farming grapes, which is driven entirely by wildly different growing seasons; and corporate winemaking driven by supply, demand and global market forces.

Now, as a boutique winemaker he says: ‘It’s a hell of a lot tougher. It’s just how farming is. You’re relying on Huey upstairs to give you a good harvest.’

To solidify the Zephyr business, Ben and his wife Susie bought half of the vineyard from his parents in 2017, which by then had grown to 35ha.

‘We bought 15-odd hectares and converted them to organics straight away, another naive decision,’ he says. Susie, a schoolteacher by profession, is now a key part of the operation.

‘She’s extremely intuitive in regard to what needs to get done and how to get the best out of people, whether it’s a six-year-old child, a precocious 18-year-old or me, a 52-year-old man,’ says Ben.

But having made the big decision to shift the focus back on the home vineyards, an even bigger decision came along.

Coming full circle

‘In 2018, there was a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy a property in Marlborough that had come up for sale quietly,’ Glover says. ‘That was part of the Seresin Estate winery. An 8ha property with 3ha of vineyards and a 1,200-ton facility, simply stunning.’

Sue and Ben then clubbed together with friends and family to reinvent the vineyards and its winery as The Coterie. It is co-owned by the Glovers, their in-laws Sally and John Flanagan, Ben’s brother Jack Glover and Rhyan Wardman, chairman of local New Zealand airline Sounds Air and another wine industry veteran.

‘It was very much a decision with the heart and the head,’ Ben says about this innovative venture. ‘We set the business up as a custom crush facility focused on organics. We have 13 clients currently ranging from 1 ton to 400 tons of fruit. We want to promote organics and help anyone who’s in that space, give them a facility where they can thrive.’

He adds: ‘It’s a really tight-knit group. We’re all different, but that’s what’s exciting. You talk, discuss issues, problems, whatever. Sharing is key. I really enjoy that because it’s a bit of giving back.’

Ben loves that he returned to the vineyard, literally and figuratively. ‘I’m really enjoying doing more and more viticulture, tucking lifting wires and leaf plucking by hand. I don’t mind evolving back to that peace. I think that’s a really cool journey.’

Zephyr Wines at a glance

Founded: 2007

Owner: The Coterie

Average annual production: 60,000 cases

Vineyard area: 75ha

Key vineyards: Brawn Vineyards (organic) and Kerseley Vineyard in the Dillons Point subregion of Marlborough are the original Glover Family vineyards first planted in 1988. Brink Vineyard in Renwick, Wairau Valley, is Marlborough’s oldest organic vineyard planted in 1992. Alice Mills Estate is also in the Wairau Valley.

Varieties: Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir

Brands: Zephyr Wines, Massey Dacta and Bob short for Kate (a homage to Ben Glover’s sister who died of cancer a few years ago) are made from estate-owned vineyards, with some bought-in fruit for the latter. Spoke is made from estate-grown and bought-in fruit in a collaboration with UK merchant Liam Steevenson MW of Vineyard Productions in Bristol.

Ben Glover wines to try

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There was a time when you could easily pick a Central Otago Pinot Noir out of a blind line up. The bold, muscular and ripe wine would always be the ticket, its intensity and power reflecting the stark beauty of the landscape.

How things change. With less extraction, less oak and earlier harvests, the wines have seen a reset that allows fruit and provenance to shine – while revealing the sometimes subtle, sometimes marked differences between Central Otago’s distinct subregions.

With just 2,054ha of vines, Central Otago on New Zealand’s South Island represents just 4.9% of the country’s vineyards, according to the New Zealand Wine Vineyard Report 2023. But it is home to 29.2% of the country’s Pinot Noir plantings.

This means that Pinot Noir takes up just over 80% of Central Otago’s vineyards, set against snow-capped peaks and glacial lakes.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores for 20 Central Otago Pinots

The region’s pristine air translates into some of the world’s most intense sunshine, which explains the once much punchier wine style that initially put Central Otago on the map. Grapes were harvested at plush maximum ripeness and high potential alcohol, which was then underlined in the winery by vigorous extraction of tannins and ageing in small, often new oak barrels.

An evolution of style

But sensibilities have changed. Earlier harvests now prize aromatics over alcohol, while both extraction and new oak are dialled back. Jen Parr, winemaker at Valli Wine in Gibbston, says: ‘The concept of ripeness has changed, not only for Valli but for most of us.’ Less is now more and red-fruited, floral aromas are more common than black cherry or dark-fleshed plum.

‘Twenty years ago when you did not do a punch down every four hours, there was something wrong with you,’ quips Rudi Bauer, co-owner and winemaker at Quartz Reef in Bendigo.

His much younger colleague Brian Shaw, co-owner and winemaker at Wild Irishman in Alexandra, explains how gently he now extracts.

‘2019 was the first year we really pulled back. We now just keep the cap wet with a watering can, and – if we can handle it – we will give the ferment just one punch down over the entire time.’

Duncan Forsyth of Mount Edward sums it up when he says: ‘The way we have evolved stylistically is that these elements like tannin and acid are coming at you anyway. We now have less extraction and aim to have an elegant, supple, soft representation of these vineyards.’

This new, more restrained approach allows us drinkers to taste real differences between Central Otago’s subregions.

From the cool Gibbston Valley, via warm Bannockburn, to arid Alexandra in the south, along either side of the Clutha river in Lowburn, Pisa and Bendigo, up to more temperate Wanaka in the north.

Not forgetting the tiny offshoot of Waitaki Valley, which links Central Otago and the South Island’s eastern coast.

Let’s take a look at these subregions from north to south…

Wanaka

On vineyards sloping towards and surrounding picturesque Lake Wānaka, a glacial freshwater lake and New Zealand’s fourth-largest, this cooler subregion gets 600mm of annual rainfall.

Vines grow on a mixture of schist-based soils, moraines and clays, at altitudes up to 400m. The lake acts as a moderating influence.

‘Wanaka is not as hot, not as cold, not as dry,’ as the other subregions of Central Otago, says Nick Mills of Rippon Vineyard. ‘Wanaka is the most temperate climate of Central Otago. Precision and articulation of tannin are the calling cards of this valley,’ he adds.

Bendigo

These west and north-west facing slopes on the eastern shore of Lake Dunstan are some of the warmest vineyard sites in Central Otago. ‘Sun-drenched’ is how Misha Wilkinson (below) of Misha’s Vineyard puts it, with the vines basking in every last ray of sunshine until sunset.

Since vineyards slope down to the lakeshore, both water and cold air drain freely on very rocky, schistous soils. Vines at around 200m at the lake shore are harvested three to four weeks before those higher up at around 400m.

Both quartz and calcium carbonate seams crop up on these hillsides. The soils create structured Pinot Noirs with firm tannins that enable these wines to age and evolve – in fact, they are better with bottle age.

Gibbston

This region along the Kawarau Gorge extending east of Queenstown is ‘the highest, wettest and coldest subregion of Central Otago’, says Shaw of Wild Irishman.

Vines root in loess, loams and gravels on top of schist at altitudes between 300m and 480m. They get 550-600mm of rain per year. Gibbston is probably the most distinct Central Otago subregion in character, with vividly red-fruited, tender, translucent yet expressive wines.

Fine, tea-like tannins and floral, peppery overtones mean Gibbston-grown Pinots are some of the most perfumed and aromatic. ‘Gibbston is all about fragrance,’ concludes Parr of Valli Wines.

Cromwell, Lowburn & Pisa

Extending north from Cromwell on the western shore of Lake Dunstan, Lowburn and Pisa sites are varied. Some are in the valley on deeper soils that have been farmed for a long time; others are on slopes of up to 350m.

The vines root in a mix of silts, loams, with quartz, calcium carbonate, schist and sandstone. ‘The climate is severe,’ explains Yoshiaki Sato of Sato Wines. ‘Cold air always runs down from the mountain.

‘But we are facing east, so we warm up quickly in the morning, between 45 minutes and an hour earlier than Bendigo [across Lake Dunstan]. In the afternoon it is the opposite. We get less of the intense sunlight,’ he adds.

Fine tannins, clarity and exquisite brightness run through these nervy, translucent wines.

Bannockburn

Deeper soils – of loam, clay, silt, gravel, loess and even clay on top of schist bedrock – are a distinguishing feature of Bannockburn. Meanwhile its climate is the warmest in Central Otago.

It extends south of Cromwell along the Kawarau Gorge. It is the quality of the tannins that distinguishes Bannockburn, uniting ripeness with density and finesse.

Yes, there is power in these wines, but it is controlled and elegant rather than punchy.

Alexandra

This is Central Otago’s most southerly subregion along the Clutha River. Shaw of Wild Irishman notes: ‘Alexandra is the hottest and coldest place in New Zealand – it is very continental.’

The dramatic temperature shifts here see the highest day and coldest night temperatures. With just 300-350mm of rain per year, it is also the driest.

The vineyards, much lower-lying at around 150-200m, grow mostly on alluvial silts and sandy gravels, again on schist bedrock. The wines show a different, more elastic tannin structure, with vivid juiciness and energetic fruit.

Waitaki Valley

This tiny subregion is really nothing more than an outpost, some 2.5 hours’ drive north-east from Cromwell in North Otago.

Here there are just 59ha of vines rooting in limestone. The climate is cool, even marginal, and frost is always a risk. The coolness means that bunch weights are lower and that harvests can last into May.

Everything here is fraught with risk, but the wines are delicate yet intense expressions of Pinot Noir with red-fruited depth, vivid tension and beguiling aromatics.

Valli’s Parr says: ‘Making Waitaki wines is the wildest ride of my career.’

Central Otago: recent vintages

2022: Sufficient rain and warm, dry conditions in the growing season spelled some higher yields. But fruit was healthy and beautifully balanced.

2021: A splendid growing season with a coolish start but fine, dry harvest and exquisite and healthy fruit. These wines will hit the UK later this year.

2020: A cool season in Central Otago with some poor flowering, so Bendigo and Bannockburn saw lower yields. But the wines from the Covid vintage are beautiful.

2019: Poor flowering, caused by dampness in spring, spelled concentrated fruit that ripened well with sufficient temperature and water.

2018: After the hottest growing season ever, harvest in Central Otago was very early and the wines seem more developed than others at the same age, already showing clear evolution.

Central Otago Pinot Noir: 20 to try

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In addition to AMW’s recently launched map and tightening of the source area for AMW-certified fruit, it has updated its yield requirements with a minimum sugar ripeness level for members, whose grapes – other than those destined for low-alcohol products – must now exceed 18 Brix at harvest.

It has also appointed its first CEO, Michael Wentworth, to drive membership and advocacy goals and to create greater public awareness of the group. AMW chair, John Buchanan, said: ‘Up until this point, AMW’s growth has been rather organic. We’ve made significant in-roads with wine buyers and enthusiasts over the past few years and it is critical that we capitalise on this momentum.’

Established in 2018 due to concerns with the rapid industry growth that brought with it an increase of bulk wine shipments and secondary non-winery aligned brands, AMW aims instead to promote the region’s diversity and create guardrails to prevent ‘the dilution of brand value of Marlborough that is occurring because of the dilution of the product itself’.

According to the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), New Zealand’s bulk wine exports comprised 41% of the total volume in 2023, the overwhelming majority of which is Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.

In addition to the parameters above, AMW-certified wines must be 100% Marlborough fruit, be bottled in New Zealand, certified by Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand, BioGro NZ or an equivalent, and have been approved by an independent panel of local winemakers.

There are now 54 members of varying sizes who have signed an enforceable code of conduct and who use the AMW logo on their labels and marketing. At its inception, only Sauvignon Blanc wines were permitted but in 2022 certification was expanded to all varieties grown in the region, with Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and aromatic wines now bearing the AMW mark.

‘Ultimately, wines that are certified under the AMW regulations offer drinkers an authentic, quality expression of Marlborough. Sadly, with bulk wine shipments and expansion of vineyards into marginal areas, that’s not always the case, so by elevating the profile of AMW we give wine drinkers a choice,’ said Wentworth.

New Zealand’s Geographical Indications (GI) Act was passed into law at the end of 2016, permitting the registration and global protection of place names but without further restrictions such as varieties or production methods, and only 85% of fruit needs to come from a particular GI for it to be on the label. While such flexibility is largely welcomed in a young country like New Zealand, whose regions are still in the process of refining what works best for them, the flipside is that it provides little official encouragement towards or benchmarking of quality expectations.

The Marlborough GI, as with most others in the country, follows geo-political boundaries rather than wine-growing ones. AMW’s map delineates the wine-growing areas and has a near overlap with where the region’s rainfall sits below 900mm, an especially important variable for a thin-skinned disease-susceptible variety like Sauvignon Blanc.

AMW’s recent agreement with members to stay within its map’s boundaries rather than those of the wider GI’s is anchored in the view of many producers that Marlborough is at its planted limits for quality wine production. Wentworth said: ‘As quality land has become scarce within Marlborough, we are increasingly seeing expansion into marginal areas, areas with very high rainfall. We are not looking to limit growers ability to grow where they want, taking on all the associated risk, all we are seeking is a more realistic border to reflect quality winemaking, and for those that make the choice to grow outside the region, not to be able to utilise “Marlborough” on the label.’

AMW regards its advocacy as a driver of change, and pressing New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) for better regulation will be one of Wentworth’s key tasks.

‘NZW last year introduced a voluntary code of practice for bulk wine shipments, seeking buy-in from producers – that is still under review,’ he said. ‘We believe the industry needs tighter regulations in place, to take some real leadership and implement compulsory standards. It’s the only way to ensure consistency across the industry and maintain quality standards. It’s not about impacting people’s livelihoods, it’s protecting our hard-earned reputation and giving wine drinkers confidence that they are purchasing a quality product, reflective of the region.’

With the dominance Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc has in New Zealand’s industry, it’s a concern many share, but lobbying for the tightening of GI regulations and national minimum Brix standards will likely be a long game.

NZW thus far seem happier for an ad hoc approach to appellatory regulations to occur. Charlotte Read, general manager of brand for NZW, said: ‘We applaud the efforts of any collaboration of members that combine resources to amplify a strong premium New Zealand wine message. One of the enablers of the New Zealand wine industry’s rapid rise to global prominence has been our flexible regulatory system. At the current time we do not believe there is an industry consensus for a change to existing settings, but, of course, private initiatives are free to innovate as they so choose.’

So far, AMW is the only entity to pursue a stricter approach. Central Otago, where a significant proportion of fruit and wine moves out of the region to be processed in other wineries or bottling facilities, is more focused on subregional GIs, with Bannockburn registered in February 2022 and Bendigo likely to follow suit. While Central Otago has largely maintained its premium pricing and reputation, it’s an area on which its producers and regional body Central Otago Winegrowers Association (COWA) continue to keep a close eye.

Wentworth believes AMW won’t be going it alone for long. ‘There is a genuine interest in what we are doing from other regions within the country, and I believe it won’t be long before we see other regional groups like ours emerge throughout New Zealand. This now gives the wine drinker a genuine choice – we just need to amplify our message and encourage people to look for the AMW logo as their guarantee of quality and authenticity.’

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It’s ironic that when I go to interview actor and wine producer Sam Neill at his Central Otago farm, HQ for his Two Paddocks wines, he isn’t there.

Because as well as being famous for his roles in, among others, The Piano and the Jurassic Park franchise, and TV’s Peaky Blinders, Neill has a reputation as the most hands-on of celebrity winemakers; when he’s not travelling for work, he lives at the farm, where he’s known affectionately as ‘The Proprietor’ or simply ‘The Prop’.

He built a house there, in among the vines, and it’s very much his base, to the extent that when he received a devastating blood cancer diagnosis two years ago, he told the specialist (in Australia) ‘that I wouldn’t come back for a few days, that I hadn’t been to my farm for months and I needed to sleep in my own bed… plant something, be a farmer and a wine producer, even if it was only for a few days. I really needed to do that.’

Scroll down to see notes and scores for eight wines from Sam Neill’s Two Paddocks estate

Finding time

He wrote this in his engaging memoir Did I Ever Tell You This? (paperback, £10.99 Penguin, March 2024), penned during treatment that has proved largely successful – he’s now in full metabolic remission, though still taking preventative drugs.

The book devotes two full chapters to his life in wine and the pages might as well have red wine sploshes all over them, so clear is Neill’s love for the subject, and for Pinot Noir in particular.

I didn’t meet Neill that day; he had been called abroad hurriedly due to a changed film schedule. But I spent an afternoon with his close teammates, winemaker Dean Shaw (who has worked with Two Paddocks since 1999) and viticulturist Mike Wing (joined in 2004).

And a full tasting of Two Paddocks’ releases later, I got to scratch the bristly head of Neill’s beloved kunekune, pig Angelica, which is actually a boar, so that was some compensation.

We schedule a Zoom interview, me back in the UK with a bottle of Two Paddocks Riesling open on my desk as it’s 8pm, and Neill apologising for his jet lag at 9am NZ time back on the farm.

He has just flown in from the US, where he has been publicising his new TV drama Apples Never Fall, co-starring Annette Bening. He perks up the moment we start to talk about wine and we move quickly to his favourite subject, ‘Lord Pinot’.

Falling in love

In another life, Neill might have joined the drinks trade, as he had family connections. Wines and spirits were a core part of New Zealand company Neill & Co, where his father (post-army career) and grandfather both worked.

But Neill showed little interest in drinks until he visited the great actor James Mason at his home on the shores of lake Geneva in 1980, where he was introduced to red Burgundy during a meal at Charlie Chaplin’s favourite restaurant.

Neill was immediately smitten and is still cross that he can’t remember precisely where that first wine originated. He ‘continued his love affair with Burgundy for the next 12 years or so’, discovering Pinot from Oregon along the way.

It was the late Rolfe Mills of Rippon Vineyard at lake Wanaka in Central Otago who first put in Neill’s head the idea of growing Pinot there; Neill describes tasting Rippon’s 1991 Pinot as a ‘lightbulb moment’.

His first vineyard was planted in 1993 in the middle of the Gibbston valley. Neill’s film director mate Roger Donaldson bought the next plot along, hence Two Paddocks. ‘It really was a gamble,’ Neill admits.

‘No one knew how those initial two hectares of Pinot would fare in what is quite an extreme climate. Gibbston is the highest region in Central, surrounded by the southern Alps – very cold in winter, heat never guaranteed, and frost can come at almost any time.

‘We had snow up the valley while I was away this year in February. Rational people shouldn’t make wine here,’ Neill half-jokes, ‘but I’ve learned that to produce great Pinot, you have to teeter on the edge of viability.’

He now owns three more vineyards: the Red Bank Farm and home base at Earnscleugh, Alexandra, bought in 2000; the Last Chance vineyard close to Alexandra, which Neill ventures ‘might be the most southerly vineyard in the world’, through which runs a small water race, hand-dug by gold miners in the 1860s; and finally the Fusilier vineyard in Bannockburn, named after his army officer father.

The Fusilier, purchased in 2013, is on Felton Road, very close to Felton Road Wines, and it’s clear the famous location meant a lot to Neill, thanks to the healthy rivalry between the two producers.

Two Paddocks at a glance

Founded: 1993

First vintage: 1997

Owner: Sam Neill

Vineyards: Red Bank Farm (Earnscleugh, Alexandra); The First Paddock (Gibbston); The Last Chance (Earnscleugh, Alexandra); The Fusilier (Bannockburn)

Varieties: Pinot Noir and Riesling

Organic: Certified BioGro since 2017

Free-range Otago boy

What makes Central Otago Pinot so special? Neill thinks for a while before replying that the wines are particularly ‘vivid’. Some claim that the gold that may still be in the soil accounts for such vivacity, but he doesn’t have a firm opinion on this himself.

Rather he looks for a source of the ‘toasted herbs’ in his wines and finds it in the wild thyme bushes that grow in large thickets across the region’s dry hills. ‘Thyme was planted by 19th-century Chinese gold diggers to ward off insects – now it’s everywhere and it can influence the wine, just as eucalyptus can do in Australia.’

Back at Red Bank Farm, 5.5ha of Pinot and Riesling are joined by many other crops, including lavender (to produce lavender oil), saffron, olives and cherries, as well as oak trees. The oak has been planted by Neill as recompense for his use of barrels in the winery. ‘It’s on my conscience,’ he says. ‘Someone using oak should be planting oak.’

Nigel Greening, the British owner of Felton Road Wines, says that Neill ‘grew up a free-range Otago boy and is always happiest when on the farm… He’s the antithesis of the famous film star with a vineyard – far more concerned with honesty in his wines than in impressing people.’

Notable Pinot wizard Larry McKenna, who has worked as consultant to Two Paddocks over many years, adds: ‘I think he feels the “celebrity winemaker” tag, but he does not sign up to it or think of himself in that way.’

Going his own way

Conversion to organic viticulture was Neill’s decision – his teammates roll their eyes when remembering his insistence. He ‘hates the scorched earth policy’ and ‘can’t bear to drive past vineyards which are conventional after seeing what herbicides do’.

After a short interruption in organic viticulture when weed control had to be used for newly acquired vineyards, Two Paddocks wines were re-certified organic by BioGro in 2017. Neill is the first to suggest that thanks to Central Otago’s low humidity and persistent winds it’s easier to farm organically here than in some areas.

Affable, relaxed but not remotely ‘luvvie’, Neill nonetheless holds some entrenched views. Most are positive – interestingly, he admires the Shiraz of former Penfolds winemaker John Duval, now of the eponymous Barossa winery.

But he has his strong dislikes; he loathes ‘horrible corks’ and was ‘absolutely infuriated’ when he lost a third of his 1999 bottles to cork taint. Since 2001, Two Paddocks has only used Stelvin screw caps. And, he declares, ‘Pinot Gris does nothing for me’, in a region where the grape is often extolled.

He does have plenty of time for Riesling, however, having been ‘converted to it in Alsace’ while he was filming there during the 1980s. ‘Riesling planted in Central Otago just sits up and says, “I love it here.” You can’t grow Riesling everywhere, like you can with Chardonnay, but it works here particularly well.’

He points to the kerosene complexity of mature Central Otago Rieslings; certainly his younger wines are promisingly delicious.

Where to next? For now, Neill seems satisfied with his four vineyards in Central Otago. ‘They are all distinctly different and there’s something Burgundian about that. The sub-regions are becoming increasingly recognised and really, I welcome it.’

As for the Two Paddocks style of Pinot: ‘We were making subtle, restrained wines 20 years ago, when Central Otago was getting a name for rather obvious fruit bombs. We continue to go our own way.’

Central Otago star power: Susy Atkins’ eight wines to try from Two Paddocks

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As you enjoy a glass of festive fizz, take yourself back to the start of 2000 and consider this commentary on the state of New Zealand sparkling wine:

‘If you can imagine an oloroso Sherry with bubbles, you will understand why we did not linger… They were made from poor-quality fruit and showed a lack of sparkling wine technique… The Blanc de Blancs was the worst of all, with thin, unripe fruit, which lacked acidity because, ironically, it had been deacidified.’

So wrote Champagne and sparkling wine writer Tom Stevenson about the New Zealand fizz scene some 23 years ago. Mercifully, there were glimmers of hope in his scathing criticism – he also commented that ‘the potential of Marlborough for sparkling wine is, so far, beyond dispute’.

Today, not only Marlborough but many other New Zealand wine regions have fulfilled that potential, producing sparkling wines that are very good indeed.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of 19 top New Zealand sparkling wines to try

New Zealand’s sparkling wine history extends quite a bit further back than 2000, however. The first traditional-method fizz was made by Hawke’s Bay’s Mission Estate in 1963 – though while the method of its sparkling pink Fontanella may have been traditional, its use of Pinot Gris was decidedly less so.

Selak’s Champelle followed in the 1970s, but it was the 1980s when things really started to ramp up. This was the era of Champagne Deutz’s Marlborough investment, Cloudy Bay’s Pelorus and Daniel Le Brun transferring his 12 generations of Champagne roots to Marlborough.

Further south, Rudi Bauer (now of Quartz Reef) and partner Clotilde Chauvet (who was also making Champagne in Rilly-la-Montagne) were making strides in Central Otago.

Daniel Le Brun remembers his amazement at encountering Marlborough vineyards for the first time in 1978. ‘It was perfect conditions that summer, there wasn’t a clump of grass anywhere… just a small amount of topsoil then nothing but gravel – fantastic! I thought, this has to be the place.’

The generosity of spirit of pioneers such as Bauer, Chauvet and Le Brun helped other producers gain knowledge and confidence, and alongside the burgeoning local production was increasing investment from France, not only with Deutz but also in time from Chandon, Mumm and LVMH (who purchased Cloudy Bay outright), which provided technical finesse and international attention.

Charms and challenges

What was always clear was New Zealand’s excellent raw material for high-quality sparkling wine. The country’s wine regions (with the exception of the slightly more temperate far northern climes) are classical cool-climate viticultural environments. Allied with high UV/sunshine hours and significant diurnal shifts these deliver good phenolic ripeness without high sugar (alcohol) and retain decent natural acidity.

For sparkling wine, this translates to precise fruit expression, laser-like acidity and rich palate fruit weight. Producers benefit from these benevolent growing conditions which allow the focus to be on getting things right in the winery.

That part, however, is easier said than done. The challenge for New Zealand sparkling wine producers in a young industry already operating within a high capital-cost environment is the significant investment required for specialist sparkling winemaking equipment, and the luxury of capital and space to hold back stock for reserve wines.

For many, the latter is simply not an option and vintage wines are common as a result. But collaborations are a frequent solution to the former problem. It is quite common for producers to share in or make their sparkling wines at another winery with the gear. For example, a number of Marlborough producers use No.1 Family Estate as a processing facility. Soljans is an Auckland home for others.

Boutique industry

Sparkling wine is produced the length and breadth of New Zealand. Distinctive regional expressions range from the weightier fruit of Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne to the rapier precision of Central Otago.

The majority are made in the traditional method, aided by widespread planting of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir plantings (Pinot Meunier is the rarity). There is also a solid range of Charmat (tank-method) wines and an increasing number of quirky pétillants naturels.

As might be expected, Marlborough’s produces the lion’s share. It’s nearly 3.5 times that of Hawke’s Bay, which in turn is about twice as much as Gisborne and three times as large as Central Otago.

In 2023, total New Zealand sparkling production was 1.7% of the national harvest and 2.7% of exports. While exports have steadily crept up over the past decade, production share has been in steady decline, down from 5% in 2005 and 3% in 2011.

Labour of love

This seemingly downwards slide is not quite what it seems. Instead, it reflects the ever-increasing dominance of Sauvignon Blanc, now 78% of the total harvest. And fortunately, sparkling producers remain undeterred.

Johanneshof Cellars’ Edel Everling says: ‘It’s definitely labour of love; a passion. It’s hard to get a return due to the hand labour involved but it’s a point of difference for us. It satisfies our curiosity for what our vineyards can do.’

‘We have only done it for 33 years so we are still learning,’ she laughs.

For Daniel Le Brun’s daughter Virginie, being asked ‘Can it ever really be as good as the real thing?’ generates a look of polite disdain.

For her, there is no longer any need for comparison. The better question is, how good can New Zealand sparkling wine be? And when will its reputation catch up with what is being delivered in the glass?

Perhaps now’s the time for more consumers to find out.

Méthode Marlborough

Méthode Marlborough is a society of 12 like-minded Marlborough sparkling wine producers. Established in 2013, it aims to promote the benchmarking, understanding and enjoyment of quality Marlborough sparkling wine.

All Méthode Marlborough wines are grown, bottled, matured and disgorged in Marlborough, and made in the traditional method from one or a blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Wines must be aged for a minimum of 18 months on lees from the first disgorgement but, in practice, members’ wines average 36 months on lees.

Member producers – whose wines can be identified with a back-label emblem – celebrate Méthode Marlborough Day with consumers each March and provide one another with collaboration and support.

New Zealand sparkling wine: 19 exciting wines to try

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Marlborough’s problem is one of transition: for people visiting New Zealand, even for many nationals, it is a place you go past if you’re going somewhere else. Its location – a 30-minute drive south of Picton (the main port of entry to the South Island via the Cook Strait car ferry from Wellington) – means people are either trying to make it north to the ferry or continuing south to Christchurch, Otago or even west to Nelson and the West Coast region.

That’s a shame because Marlborough has everything to offer if you just stop and take a bit more time. Its main centre Blenheim is a functional town but set in beautiful part of New Zealand. And the mountains and hills feel close, especially the dramatic Richmond Range to the north.

Indeed, as Auntsfield winemaker Luc Cowley pointed out, you can always orient yourself in the Wairau Valley, Marlborough’s main wine-growing area: the blue mountains (the Richmond Ranges) lie to the north and the green mountains lie to the south. These latter are more a shade of brown in summer, hence their name: the Wither Hills.

The Marlborough Sounds, too – a collection of ancient valleys flooded with Pacific ocean waters along a 1,500km stretch of coastline – is a stone’s throw away. While many patrons of the car ferry admire its beauty as they pass through the parade of pristine, almost uninhabited bays and coves before hopping in their vehicle and driving on, it is a very good reason to hang around.

Diversity in abundance

There is much else on offer in Marlborough – and that is true of the wines, too. The region has considerably more to recommend it than the Sauvignon Blanc upon which it made its reputation. What’s more, most cellar doors are focused in a relatively small and easily navigable area around Blenheim and Renwick 8km to its west, with the region’s airport lying in between.

In this road trip, we’ve allocated two days to the Wairau Valley so visitors can really get an idea of how diverse the sub-region and its wines can be. Further information can be found on the wine tourism map at marlboroughwinenz.com, while the more energetic traveller can take advantage of local bicycle routes.

We’ve grouped our three-day itinerary so it can easily be rearranged. For instance, those travelling down from North Island could arrive in Picton and head straight to the Marlborough Sounds before returning to Picton the next morning and heading south to Blenheim. Both days 1 and 2 finish around Renwick, which allows travellers to take the 1.5-hour drive along State Highway 6 (SH6) further west to Nelson.

If you only have two days available, start with the day 2 itinerary then do day 1’s suggested trip in reverse (ie, drive out to Renwick and head up SH6 before turning east onto Rapaura Road). Fit in the wineries you want before continuing on Rapaura Road to meet SH1 and continue your journey south.

Day one: Wairau Valley from Blenheim

Grab a breakfast coffee and toastie from Sammies on Scott Street. A Kimcheese (kimchi and cheese – add a pork and fennel sausage pattie if you want) is a monumental start to anyone’s day. From there, it’s a short drive just out of town to Lawson’s Dry Hills – a pioneer of sustainable practices in Marlborough and producer of fine aromatic white wines. From here, a variation on our itinerary would be a 15-minute drive down State Highway One (SH1) to Seddon and the Awatere Valley. This sub-region is slightly cooler than the main Wairau Valley and contains many newer – and sizeable – vineyard plantings, which deliver some truly exciting wines. One of the few cellar doors here is Yealands.

But our main route heads north on SH1 for 15 minutes, crossing the Wairau river to stop off the roundabout at Tuamarina to visit the memorial to the Wairau Affray of 1843 and a glimpse of the country’s often violent colonial past.

From Tuamarina, head back the way you came and turn right onto Rapaura Road at Spring Creek where a number of wineries have their cellar doors. We suggest the pan-regional Saint Clair and idiosyncratic Rock Ferry on the way to a tasting and lunch at Cloudy Bay on Jacksons Road. One of Marlborough’s flagship brands, owned by French luxury goods giant LVMH, its cellar door will impress even the most corporate-cynical.

From Cloudy Bay, get back onto Rapaura Road and head west (and then south) to Renwick. There are many wineries on this stretch, so how many you have time for will depend on how long that lunch was.

The proudly organic Te Whare Ra is one of Marlborough’s must-visit wineries and Framingham has a well-deserved reputation for its Rieslings. Hans Herzog produces a range of unexpected varieties and wines, while Huia is an unsung gem. Bubbles fans can stop in at No1 Family Estate, while Nautilus provides a glimpse into day 2 as some of its fruit (in particular its Pinot Noir) is sourced from the Southern Valleys sub-region. And the excellent Fromm is near the airport on your 11-minute drive back to Blenheim.

Day two: Southern Valleys from Blenheim

Fuel up for the day at Burleigh Gourmet Pies, a Marlborough landmark on the southwestern edge of Blenheim town – try the signature pork belly pie. Then, just a few hundred metres west along New Renwick Road is the turn-off for the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre (see ‘address book’, below), which includes Sir Peter Jackson’s impressive collection of World War I aircraft.

Back on New Renwick Road and the turn-off south to Auntsfield marks the first stop on our Southern Valleys wine tour where wind-blown loess has settled in the valleys and provided the clay so essential to its Pinot Noir.

Brancott Valley is the next one along and, although there are no major cellar doors, a number of producers source fruit from here, and Dog Point sits at the base of the ridge that separates Brancott Valley from Omaka Valley. At the head of the Brancott Valley lie two vineyards with stellar reputations: Clayvin, now part of Giesen, and The Wrekin. The latter’s excellent organic fruit is used by numerous brands and highlighted on their wine labels, from one-man-band outfits to the more established Jules Taylor Wines.

Back onto the New Renwick Road again and continuing onto Dog Point Road, Omaka Valley is the next one along, and here you’ll find the must-visit Greywacke – make sure you book an appointment-only, no-charge tasting in advance (weekdays 11am or 2pm) by emailing through the website.

Drive back up towards Renwick to take the SH63 west a short distance before ducking down to the more expansive Waihopai Valley. Once home to the New Zealand government’s not-so-secret satellite listening facility (the huge white domes have since been dismantled, although the facility is still in operation), it also houses Spy Valley Wines and Churton – both well worth a visit, although Churton is by appointment only.

Finally, call in at nearby Clos Henri, which is owned by the Bourgeois family from Sancerre in the Loire, before heading back to Blenheim.

Day three: Picton, Nelson, Marlborough Sounds

Time to head into the locals’ playground: the stunning Marlborough Sounds. Drive up to Picton with a quick stop at Johanneshof cellar door on the way. Once in town, park the car, check the ferry timetable and stop in at Toastie for a snack while you wait. There is a range of truly breathtaking resorts and lodges throughout the Sounds, each of which offers a variety of activities, but Punga Cove, Bay of Many Coves Resort and Furneaux Lodge are among those recommended.

The more adventurous early-riser might want to combine this leg with a spot of guided kayaking or a stint on the Queen Charlotte Track, a 71km-long walking and biking track running from Anakiwa, at the head of Queen Charlotte Sound in the south (about 30 minutes’ drive from Picton) to Meretoto/Ship Cove in the north of the Sounds. A local operator such as Wilderness Guides should steer you in the right direction.

Once you’ve chosen your activity, board the ferry, or bike, walk or paddle your way to your chosen destination. Then, whether you’ve hiked, paddled, snorkeled, sailed or cycled – or merely strolled the jetty – it’s time to sit back and relax with a glass of Marlborough wine.

How to get there

If you already have your own vehicle, Cook Strait ferries run between Wellington and Picton, the journey time being around 3.5 hours; otherwise it’s a 300km (4-4.5 hour) scenic drive from Christchurch. Otherwise, hire a car after arriving into Marlborough Airport Blenheim: Air New Zealand flies from Auckland and Wellington, and Sounds Air runs limited services from Christchurch, Wellington and Paraparaumu.

Your Marlborough address book

Accommodation

14th Lane

Ideally located in central Blenheim. Formerly The Builder’s Arms, the views aren’t great and it boasts no restaurant or bar, but the rooms more than compensate.

Furneaux Lodge

Tucked all the way up in the stunning Marlborough Sounds, just over the hill from Captain Cook’s favourite NZ anchorage, this place is as magical in the rain as it is in the sun.

Hotel d’Urville

Full of character, both inside and out, the rear bar flows into an outside area which doesn’t quite match the inside vibe but is surprisingly comfortable on summer evenings.

Restaurants & cafés

Arbour

The fine-dining Marlborough experience on everyone’s lips, winemakers included. Named NZ’s Best Regional Restaurant in 2022 by Cuisine, it also has a coveted ‘two hats’ rating from the food and drink lifestyle publication.

Frank’s Oyster Bar and Eatery

Another restaurant that comes recommended by local winemakers, you’ll find this one in central Blenheim.

The Store

In Kekerengu, a 50-minute drive south of Blenheim on SH1, its sweeping vistas across a wild coastline make it well worth the stop on the way to Christchurch.

Things to do

Festivals

The summer months of January, February and March respectively feature the Picton Maritime Festival, the Marlborough Wine & Food Festival and the Havelock Mussel and Seafood Festival.

Marlborough Farmers Market

Held on Sundays at Blenheim’s A&P showgrounds, this is a great way to enjoy a range of regional produce with a minimum of travel.

Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre

A must-visit for historic aircraft enthusiasts, or for an extra-special occasion, this renowned aviation museum at Blenheim offers the chance to book a flight on a fully restored World War II-era Avro Anson – a package starting at NZ$990 (£475) per person including a 25-minute flight. Or a 20-minute flight in a Boeing Stearman biplane, costing NZ$395 (£189) for one or two people.

Love NZ Sauvignon?

See our January 2024 issue (on sale from Wednesday 3 January 2024) for an extensive panel tasting of more than 200 current-release New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs, with notes and scores by judges Roger Jones, Freddy Bulmer and Cat Lomax.

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This year marks 50 years since vines were first planted on a commercial scale in New Zealand’s Marlborough region.

While now synonymous with Sauvignon Blanc, the perceived wisdom at the time was that the South Island too cold for the variety. So it wasn’t until two years later, in 1975, that growers replaced those original Germanic and fortified varieties.

And then, in 1979, Montana Wines (renamed Brancott Estate by parent company Pernod-Ricard in 2010) released the first Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of 15 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2022 wines – all under £20

‘It was a ground-breaking, direction-changing moment that changed the fortunes of the New Zealand Wine industry,’ Philip Gregan, CEO of New Zealand Winegrowers, told Decanter at the country’s recent annual trade tasting in London.

‘We have a variety, and a place, and a people and a culture – an open-mindedness to innovation and a confidence in being uniquely New Zealand. When you get all that right in the moment, as Marlborough did with Sauvignon Blanc, then it sets you apart.’

Jamie Marfell, chief winemaker of Brancott Estate and sister winery Stoneleigh, has worked 32 of the 50 years that vines have been planted in Marlborough and has seen the style of Sauvignon Blanc evolve considerably.

‘What we thought was good in the past – picking early, aiming for 11% alcohol, focusing on greener notes – is not what we aim for now,’ he says. ‘Back then we were worried about acidity – even deacidifying – now it is the opposite: acidity is our gold when it comes to Sauvignon Blanc.

‘Now we pick riper, looking for around 13%, and with that natural acidity and alcohol all you need to do is tweak the residual sugar – just one or two grams – to get the perfect mouthfeel, texture and richness without losing any of that aromatic purity.’

Sustainability over sub-regions

This evolution in style has come hand-in-hand with investment in the vineyard, particularly in replanting older vineyards.

This is key, says Marfell, given the price of land in Marlborough: 50 years ago it was between NZ$80 and NZ$120 a hectare, now it is NZ$400,000 a hectare, with much of the viable vineyard pockets already planted out.

The focus on regenerative farming has seen New Zealand become one of the greenest winemaking countries in the world, with 96% of its vineyards certified sustainable, 10% of those also certified organic and several biodynamic.

Producers have been quick to promote this on wine labels far more readily than identifying sub-regions or single vineyards.

‘It’s safe and simple being Marlborough,’ says Natalie Christensen, chief winemaker of Yealands, explaining that not only is it a brand in itself, with instant global recognition, but producers can blend within the Marlborough sub-regions when vintages are difficult.

‘For consumers, brands still come first. We like to think people know all about sub-regions and single vineyards, but there is a long way to go.

‘Putting a sub-appellation on the label is useful to celebrate it – to be proud of the unique qualities of a certain vineyard or area. And yes, that certainly helps as part of consumer education, which is important. But widespread sub-regionality will take time.’

Varied Marlborough Sauvignon styles

Awatere is the most distinctive of Marlborough’s sub-regions, lending herbaceous, nettle and tomato leaf aromas and flavours to its Sauvignon Blancs. In general, Wairau is what many might call the ‘classic’ Marlborough style, with punchy tropical and passion fruit tones, while the Southern Valleys offer more of a gooseberry, citrus and melon spectrum.

While most wines are purchased and enjoyed within a year or so of the vintage, aged Sauvignon Blanc releases are increasingly common, showcasing nutty, earthy almost truffle-like notes that offer exciting food-pairing opportunities. Brancott Estate’s Chosen Rows 2015 and 2013, as well as Jackson Estate’s 2017 Somerset Sauvignon Blanc are characterful examples.

Partially barrel fermented and/or matured wines are another particular style (along with those fermented with wild yeasts) which some argue masks the purity of fruit for which Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc has become famous. Several new releases tasted, however, were successful, such as Greywacke’s Wild Sauvignon Blanc 2020, Vineyard Productions’ Spoke Resolute 2021 and Saint Clair Family Estate’s Barrique 2020.

The following 15 Sauvignon Blancs from the 2022 vintage – all under £20 – are a selection of more than 50 tasted at the New Zealand Annual Trade Tasting in London.

Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2022: 15 wines under £20

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It is that time of year when the New Zealand new release Sauvignon Blancs are hitting international shelves. The 2022 wines are now available in UK retail and – after the meagre harvest in 2021 that was almost a global Sauvignon Blanc shortage – the 2022 harvest was plentiful.

At a new release tasting in London in November, however, it was clear that what needs highlighting most are varieties beyond the behemoth that is Sauvignon Blanc, which represents 72% of New Zealand’s wine production and 85% of its total wine exports.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of 15 New Zealand new release wines

Albariño, Viognier, Riesling and Grüner Veltliner jumped out for their sheer personality – no surprise given how Sauvignon Blanc proved how wonderfully suited these temperate to cool islands in the South Pacific are for aromatic grapes.

That said, two Sauvignon Blancs also feature in my line-up, one highlighting a subtle single-vineyard expression and the other rounded, oak-aged characters. There now is so much more stylistic diversity within this key category that wine lovers who are ready to graduate from the overt passionfruit, lime and grassy aromas of cool and stainless-steel-fermented Sauvignon Blanc will find much to enjoy.

I’ve also selected a lovely Marlborough Chardonnay from a new start-up called Vineyard Productions, a joint venture between two British Masters of Wine and boutique Kiwi winegrowers. You will note that not all whites I’ve picked are from the 2022 vintage – some have enjoyed a little bit more time to become themselves.

Ageworthy Pinots impress

When it comes to reds, it was Pinot Noir that stood out for me – not a surprise, really, since it is New Zealand’s most planted red grape variety. What is interesting is the crystallisation of regional identity and an increasingly refined approach that chases expression over power.

While the top examples are not cheap, they represent fantastic value for money and, as a range of mature wines also shown at the tasting amply demonstrated, New Zealand Pinots age and evolve beautifully. With red Burgundy being scarce and eye-wateringly expensive, New Zealand wines are a credible and worthwhile alternative.

Lovers of fuller-bodied reds will enjoy two seductive Syrahs I’ve singled out, as well as an elegant Bordeaux blend – all three hailing from the slightly warmer Hawke’s Bay region on the North Island.

The Syrahs blend the peppery spice of the Rhône with the ripeness of Southern Hemisphere sunshine without tipping into bulkiness, a combination I always find compelling. The great-value Bordeaux blend, meanwhile, features that same deft balance as the Syrahs, along with real charm.

New Zealand new release wines: 15 whites and reds to try

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It is what many dream of: you are an experienced executive at the top of your game, you have seen it all. Then you leave it all behind to buy a vineyard. And no, not in a famous region, but an emerging region on the other side of the world.

That is the story of Nigel Greening, British-born owner of Felton Road in Central Otago, New Zealand, who just celebrated his 25th vintage. But as anyone who has met Greening will know, marking this milestone is not a self-congratulatory rest on well-earned laurels but an opportunity to reflect on this ever-evolving project, as pioneering now as it was on its first day.

Artisan and authentic

‘I did not want to die of a heart attack on a 747 when I was 65. I wasn’t going to do the job I did,’ Greening says about his life in the mid-1990s. He was in his mid-40s then.

‘I was a creative director mainly doing very large corporate events, big expo pavilions; very stressful, high adrenaline, high-energy stuff. That was not a long-term thing.’ Yet Greening’s story differs significantly from the usual trope of a tech or banking tycoon buying a vanity vineyard.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 12 Felton Road wines to try

Greening also happened to be part of a working committee set up by the British government with the remit of looking at what the new millennium would hold. This led to a connection with Oliver Sparrow, then director of the Chatham House think-tank.

‘I was privileged to have Oliver’s insight,’ Greening says and summarises Sparrow’s societal theory. Sparrow had identified four categories of people who would prosper in the age of post-industrial feudalism. ‘First, the surfers who’d keep up with the change of technology, see a wave coming, ride it without falling off, these would be the feudal overlords. Everybody else would become a serf. But artists or artisans, carers and authentics or originals would also do well.’

Greening took Sparrow’s theory – which has now come to pass – to heart.

Ticking magical boxes

In the end, it was a project for German car manufacturer BMW in the Far East that took Greening to the other side of the world. ‘I had been to New Zealand on holiday, and I liked it,’ he remembers. ‘So I said if I could live in Wanaka, maybe I’d say yes. They said New Zealand was fine, so I went to Wanaka for a year to work for BMW.

The first night I was there, I went into a wine shop to get a bottle of wine for tea. They had a thing where winemakers presented top New Zealand Chardonnay and I got a ticket. From that next morning – and this is interesting – I wasn’t thinking ‘oh yes that is what I want to do,’ but I realised if I started researching, if I could get it right. I could be both an artisan and an authentic, and tick two of Oliver’s four magic boxes.’

Apricots and elms

At the time, Central Otago was just emerging as a wine region. Stuart Elms, a hotelier and blackcurrant farmer from Dunedin, had prospected and bought land along the Felton Road in Bannockburn. He planted Blocks 1, 2 and 3 in 1992.

The first wine was made in 1995 by Grant Taylor, now of Valli Wines, then winemaker at Gibbston Valley. It was just one hogshead barrel, not even 250 litres. The first proper vintage was not until 1997 – hence the 25th anniversary in 2022.

At the time, Elms’ plantings doubled Central Otago’s vine hectarage, which grew from 19ha in 1990 to 244ha in 1999 and 2,055ha today. By then, Greening had done his research and divined Cornish Point, an apricot orchard, as his ideal vineyard. He bought the site in 1999 and planted it in 2000. Later the same year, he bought the Felton Road estate from Stuart Elms – hence the elm tree on every screwcap.

The adventure begins

Was Greening a wine lover before? ‘I was a Burgundy drinker of great enthusiasm in an age where we could still do that; and I was familiar with the things at Calera,’ he says, referring to the legendary California Pinot Noir estate.

When did biodynamics start? ‘Pretty much right away,’ Greening says. Winemaker Blair Walter and viticulturist Gareth King both wanted to convert to organics. Due to a number of Burgundy estates working this way, Greening was aware of biodynamic methods. ‘I wasn’t convinced by the science, because there wasn’t any, but I wasn’t averse to it,’ he says.

Trials started straight away. ‘It took us a couple of years of gradual transition, so it wasn’t too scary.’ But people took note of the wine, especially in the UK where the wines were first imported by the late John Avery.

‘One thing is weird about Felton Road,’ Greening says. ‘At the point I bought it in 1999, it still was not on the radar. But [US critic Robert] Parker had seen it and had given it an amazing write-up – that caused a lot of people to pay attention.’

Does he have any regrets? ‘Oh no,’ he says with complete conviction. He remembers a line in Decanter by one of the first wine writers ever to visit Felton Road, describing Greening ‘walking through Block 3 with a mix of paternal pride and a lottery winner’s disbelief’. He smiles: ‘This was three months after I bought it, right at the end of 1999.’

Two halves

Walter has made every Felton vintage since 1997 and King was on board almost from the beginning too. It speaks volumes that both are still there, not only having stayed the course but expanded, evolved and shaped it. Greening, Walter and King learned and evolved together.

‘We regard 2012 as our renaissance, the year when we woke up,’ says Greening. ‘2011 sealed it for us. Just as we got to harvest, the grapes just started losing it, so we hauled the vintage earlier than we usually do. Hang on,’ he says emphatically. ‘This is not as ripe but we like it better’.

This meant that they switched to picking earlier from 2012 onwards. He says ‘Felton Road lives in these two halves, before and after.’ The wines clearly have more tension and ageability now.

Felton Road at a glance

Founded 1992

Owner Nigel Greening

Vineyard area 32ha

Varieties Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Riesling

Key vineyards Elms, Cornish Point, Calvert, MacMuir

Single site wines Block 1 Riesling, Block 2 Chardonnay, Block 6 Chardonnay, Block 3 Pinot Noir

Forever evolving

‘We’ve got a very detailed replanting book that runs for about 30 years,’ Greening says. It is about future-proofing the estate, gradually moving over drought-tolerant rootstocks and ‘looking at new clonal possibilities as well as massal selections’. Everything is being fine-tuned.

‘Apart from the guys who do the viticulture, we have a technical viticultural team. They do nothing but measure. They are counting bunches, counting berries, how many buds versus the spacing between buds… They are looking to establish patterns of data. Every time they see a weak vine, it will be tagged, numbered and entered into a recovery programme,’ he says.

‘Everything is at individual vine level, leading to much more accurate control of things like irrigation. We are moving irrigation underground, ending drip irrigation. This is to help us with regenerative farming. We crimp rather than cut weeds… we have all these plans. There is a lot of technical stuff that we have to research.’

Insatiably curious

Greening clearly sweats the small stuff: ‘We are now formally auditing carbons to IWCA [International Wineries for Climate Action] standards which in itself is very instructive. I love the rigour of IWCA.’ Their carbon audit extends to recording the means of transport of every visitor to the tasting room – did they come in a 4×4 or cycle?

‘We have to audit for every bottle of Felton Road in the world to its final consumption. The only way you can do it is with algorithms, you have to start by building models and have to make assumptions. This is very rigorous stuff. We are learning a lot from it,’ he says.

So once again Felton Road is at the forefront of viticulture. Greening is clear what all this carbon auditing means: ‘Ultimately, we will have to plant a forest – it will be in New Zealand, 30,000 to 40,000 trees, as the maths work themselves out,’ he says with a satisfied smile which then expands to a broad, happy grin.

‘It is so much easier to plan for the future when you do not have to darling growth!’

Felton Road: 12 wines to seek out

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Destiny Bay: aiming high on New Zealand’s Waiheke Island

It’s not often that you can say that one estate has been largely responsible for launching a wine region onto the world stage, but if any single winery could be said to have sparked a global demand for Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, that producer would have to be Cloudy Bay.

While wines were already being made in Marlborough in the early 1980s, before David Hohnen joined forces with winemaker Kevin Judd to launch Cloudy Bay in 1985, it’s just that they hadn’t yet had much of an impact beyond New Zealand’s borders.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for six Cloudy Bay wines, including the 2022 Sauvignon Blanc

Yet within a couple of years of Cloudy Bay’s launch, the country had gained a worldwide reputation as the go-to source for zesty, fruity premium Sauvignon Blanc – and Cloudy Bay had become its standard bearer. Nearly 40 years on from then, and Cloudy Bay is as much in demand as ever.

So what is it that Cloudy Bay has been doing so right for all these years? And, just as important, perhaps, what is it that they do that has helped them maintain their reputation as producers of one of the world’s best Sauvignon Blancs over the course of four decades?

Unlike many Marlborough producers, Cloudy Bay has remained relatively small, sourcing its Sauvignon Blanc grapes from three valleys in the Wairau sub-region. The area enjoys a mild maritime climate, with the heat of the summer sunshine tempered by the cooling breezes blowing in from the Pacific Ocean. Perhaps surprisingly the temperatures here are around half a degree lower, on average, than those of Sancerre.

Greywacke sandstone

While the valley’s soils are quite variable in geological character, Cloudy Bay’s vineyards are largely planted on free-draining alluvial soils with a good scattering of greywacke sandstones. ‘These rocks help to bring yields down,’ says operations winemaker Daniel Sorrell, ‘And this in turn helps us to build concentration and substance in our wines.’

Along with concentration and freshness, Sorrell aims to build a specific fruit profile in his Sauvignon Blancs. ‘We’re not looking for thiols,’ he says ‘as these fall over quickly – within six months of bottling they will have turned into flavours like canned asparagus and cat’s pee. These are definitely characters we’re not looking for in our wines, but we don’t want the other extreme either – that oily, fat style of Sauvignon Blanc with that tropical fruit character.’

Instead, what Sorrell and his colleagues seek out are bright citrus characters, with plenty of citrus and stone fruit notes and a refreshing streak of acidity. Not only do these characters make the wines attractive in their youth, the balance inherent in this profile lends the wines a surprising capacity to age (see the tasting notes below). The Cloudy Bay team are prepared to be pretty ruthless in order to achieve their aims – in some years up to 30% of the fruit harvested doesn’t make the cut and is sold off to be bottled under someone else’s label.

Climate change

One challenge Sorrell and his team are having to meet with increasing frequency is the compression of the harvest cycle in Marlborough. ‘We used to have a far bigger spread in picking dates than we do now,’ explains Sorrell, ‘but now harvest begins earlier because of climate change. We used to start picking Pelorus in March and now we begin in mid-February.

‘And,’ he continues, ‘bad weather now sets in towards the end of harvest, bringing heavy rains with it, so we have to make sure everything is picked beforehand.’

Nevertheless, the Cloudy Bay team are becoming adept at fine tuning both their viticultural techniques and their winemaking to address the exigencies of the changing climate while maintaining the wines’ hallmark elegance.

If there’s one thing wine buffs know about ageing capacity, it’s that Sauvignon Blanc doesn’t make old bones. But while that may be true of the vast majority of cheap, cheerful Sauvignon Blanc on the market, closer examination reveals that under the right conditions, the grape can age – just think of high-quality white Bordeaux, for instance, or the very best wines of Sancerre or Pouilly-Fumé.

‘Most Sauvignon Blancs are drunk within a year of bottling,’ Sorrell confirms, ‘but we wanted to show the pedigree of these wines and prove that they really can age.’

To prove it, alongside the new release 2022 (as well as oaked Te Koko and sparkling Pelorus Chardonnay-Pinot Noir), Sorrell opened three other Sauvignon Blancs that, by coincidence were all the winery’s earliest and warmest vintages: 2003, 2006 the current ‘record holder’, the 2019.

Cloudy Bay Sauvignon: new releases and some older vintages

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Roger Jones, Melanie Brown and Rebecca Palmer tasted 116 wines, with one Exceptional, five Outstanding and 40 Highly Recommended.

New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc panel tasting scores

116 wines tasted

Exceptional 1

Outstanding 5

Highly recommended 40

Recommended 45

Commended 21

Fair 4

Poor 0

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their latest releases of still white wines made with 100% Sauvignon Blanc from any region in New Zealand

New Zealand wines – particularly Sauvignon Blanc – suffered severe shortages in the 2021 vintage, so it was gratifying to see such a large number entered for this two-day tasting. In our discussions during and following it, we three judges considered regional and vintage differences as well as the range of Sauvignon Blanc styles, notably considering whether there is a lighter, more focused style emerging.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the top wines in the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc panel tasting

Highlights came from Wairarapa on North Island, which showed real quality and refinement, thanks in part to the free-draining alluvial gravels and clay silts of the terraces which produce small, concentrated berries. On South Island, wines from Waipara showcased a fresh, clean style that impressed. Likewise, it was pleasing to see what Central Otago (especially the Bannockburn sub-region) can produce – it is certainly a region to watch.

Marlborough dominated, with the Wairau sub-region a positive. Notably, we questioned whether Marlborough producers were moving away from punchy, fruity styles (that made the region’s name and which many consumers still love) to a more elegant ‘European’ style. Melanie Brown wondered if Marlborough winemakers were ‘scared to own their classic style’, or whether Mother Nature and financial circumstances had forced them into higher yields, thereby producing lighter-styled wines.

See all 116 wines from the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc panel tasting

Roger Jones considered whether producers were just responding to consumers’ changing palates. ‘Maybe Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc drinkers are moving away from old favourites that had oak and big bold flavours? Obviously plenty still enjoy these flavour-packed styles, however as a global Sauvignon Blanc standard, not just within Marlborough, it is pleasing when refinement, quality and depth combine to give a perfect wine.’

‘There’s been lots of hype about the 2021 vintage,’ said Rebecca Palmer. ‘The gross generalisation is that because yields were down then quality was up, almost as if that’s a given. But the relationship between yield and quality isn’t linear. The growing season was stop-start, affected by frost then cool weather at flowering. And hang-time is crucial to the development of aroma and flavour.’

Brown agreed: ‘I do wonder whether this was a factor in the wines submitted here: far too many I’d describe as “decent enough” but lacking the personality and balance we might have hoped for in order to give more Highly recommendeds and Outstandings.’

Due to Covid restrictions, New Zealand only fully opened its borders on 31 July 2022, and has been partially or totally locked down since March 2020. This resulted in few container ships docking, meaning delays of more than three months to take stock out of the country, not to mention the cost hike.

But it is not all doom and gloom. The 2022 vintage is looking promising, shipping should become easier and NZ Sauvignon Blanc will remain a favourite, despite this temporary mid-life crisis. Until the 2022 vintage makes it on to retailer shelves and wine lists, Decanter readers have some excellent wines to try from this panel tasting, showcasing New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc at its very best.

Top scoring New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc

The judges

Roger Jones is the retired former owner of The Harrow at Little Bedwyn restaurant in Wiltshire. He is now a wine writer, judge and consultant with a particular interest in the hospitality trade, as well as helping charities. He is a DWWA judge, with a focus on New World regions.

Melanie Brown is founder and CEO of Heist Group, which includes New World-focused online wine merchant Specialist Cellars and The Laundry restaurant, Brixton. From New Zealand, she arrived in the UK in 2015 to work as a chef for the likes of Raymond Blanc, Peter Gordon and more.

Rebecca Palmer is associate director of Corney & Barrow, based in the UK, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. She heads up the commercial buying team, covering most world regions. At DWWA 2022 she judged in the New Zealand and USA & Central America categories.

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The Scapegrace team claims it will be New Zealand’s largest ever distillery when it is fully completed in October 2023.

It will eventually produce all of Scapegrace’s award-winning gins and vodkas, along with its soon-to-be-released single malt whisky. The company plans to expand into other spirits categories further down the line too.

Managing director Daniel McLaughlin said that the climate and water quality in Central Otago – which is famed for its Pinot Noir – make the region ideal for producing spirits.

‘The halfway point between equator and south pole runs directly through our distillery site, giving us extremes in hot and cold temperatures – an optimum environment for aging whisky,’ said McLaughlin.

‘Naturally, the pristine water quality is also ideal for distilling gin and vodka, pulling from glacial run-off from the Southern Alps.’

Scapegrace Distilling Company has secured a 36-hectare plot of land overlooking Lake Dunstan, with Mount Pisa and the Bendigo mountains providing a spectacular backdrop.

McLaughlin and brother-in-law Mark Neal founded Scapegrace back in 2014, along with Richard Bourke, after bonding over a shared love of gin.

It was initially known as Rogue Society. However, it ran into copyright issues when the brand expanded into Europe in 2017, as there is a brewery with a similar name on the continent, so it was rebranded as Scapegrace.

In 2019, the company hit headlines across the globe after producing the world’s first naturally black gin, which turns purple when mixed with tonic.

Until now, the spirits have been distilled under contract in a distillery located near the base of the Southern Alps, using pure glacial water that has been filtered through layers of sediment rock for 80 years before it is released into the depths of one of the world’s last natural aquifers.

The brand’s slogan is: “The reason that Scapegrace tastes clean is because it is.” It is exported to more than 40 countries, including the UK, Australia, USA, Canada, and various parts of Europe and Asia.

Scapegrace will now be able to produce its own spirits in-house at the distillery, which was designed by Auckland-based Cheshire Architects.

Construction has started on the first building, which will house the firm’s head office, a bottling hall, a warehouse and the first barrel room. It will open in August 2022.

The second building will be opened in October 2023. There will be a bar and restaurant, while visitors can enjoy distillery tours and visit nearby goldmines. The distillery will open to the public in November 2023.

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The deal includes 34.5ha under vine in the heart of the mountainous Bannockburn sub-region. It is mainly planted with Pinot Noir, but there are pockets of Chardonnay and Riesling too.

Sir Clifford Skeggs, a Kiwi businesmman, and Lady Marie Skeggs purchased the land for Akarua in 1995, and planting began the following year. The first wines were bottled from the 1999 vintage.

Akarua is now firmly established as one of the largest family-owned operations in Central Otago, and its 100% estate-grown wines have earned critical acclaim and a string of awards.

Edmond de Rothschild Heritage, which combines the investment group’s non-banking lifestyle assets, made its first foray into New Zealand a decade ago, when it purchased 24ha in Marlborough Valley to produce the Rimapere brand.

Group president Ariane de Rothschild asked the team to find the best terroir in New Zealand to add a Pinot Noir producer to its collection.

They naturally chose Central Otago, which is widely regarded as one of the world’s best Pinot Noir producing regions outside of Burgundy, along with Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

‘We focused our search on Central Otago, the other Pinot Noir region, with a view to pinpointing the best soil there,’ said managing director Boris Breau. ‘With Akarua, we are adding a renowned family-run winery for over 20 years to our portfolio.

‘Identified as one of the best terroirs of this emblematic grape variety, it still has strong growth potential, enabling us to complete our range and consolidate our position in premium wines.’

The acquisition is subject to a variety of conditions, including the need to obtain consent from New Zealand’s Overseas Investment Office.

If it gains approval, Anne Escalle – who has served as technical director for Rimapere since 2019 – will take over operations on behalf of the group.

‘Central Otago, particularly Bannockburn, represents an ideal terroir for Pinot Noir thanks to its continental climate – rare for New Zealand – which is associated with a great deal of mineral complexity in the soil: loess over shale and sand,’ she said. ‘The Akarua vineyard is a unique site, nestled in the foothills of the mountains, offering more balanced conditions, which will undoubtedly allow our wine to grow into one of the finest Pinot Noirs.’

Ariane de Rothschild – the French banker who has run the group since 2019 – added that her late husband, Benjamin, drove the ‘exploration of far-flung destinations’ to seek out the finest terroirs.

‘In keeping with this development strategy, we are committed to untapping each vineyard’s potential to produce fine wines, with a focus on enhancing the local grape varieties,’ she said.

‘New Zealand, widely known for its excellent Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir, is one of these high-potential terroirs. After Rimapere in 2012, we’re strengthening our commitment over the long term with Akarua.’

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With fewer than 3,000 hectares, plantings of New Zealand Pinot Gris represent a drop in the ocean – about 10% – when compared to the powerhouse of Sauvignon Blanc. But according to New Zealand Wine Growers, it is close to overtaking Chardonnay as the country’s second most planted white grape.

While some wines are made in a Pinot Grigio style – a typically light-bodied ‘dry white wine’ – the best examples follow Alsace Pinot Gris. These are off-dry, with a weightier, oily mouthfeel and rich pear, honeyed stone fruit and spice flavours.

In this young winemaking country the variety is a still a baby. The oldest vines are just 25 to 30 years old, so the potential is there for more development and complexity in future. Winemakers are also experimenting with wild yeast fermentation, skin contact, lees and barrel ageing as well as concrete eggs and amphorae to enhance mouthfeel and texture in this naturally low-acid variety

The majority of plantings (more than 40%) are in Marlborough, where the South Island’s cooler climate imbues great aromatics as well as crisp acidity to offset residual sugar. But fans will find examples from all corners of both islands.

New Zealand Pinot Gris is a perfect dinner companion, matching perfectly with dishes as diverse as roast pork, mussels (or cauliflower) in a cream sauce, Thai green curry or a simple cheese board at the start or end of a meal.

The country has a wealth of top-drawer Pinot Gris from producers such as Misha’s Vineyard, Dry River, Prophet’s Rock, Greywacke, Valli and others. But here are 10 New Zealand Pinot Gris that won’t break the bank, starting from just £9.99.

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Never likely to match the popularity of the country’s Sauvignon Blanc, New Zealand Pinot Noir is nonetheless an undoubted success story.

Although the first vines were planted almost 140 years ago, in 1883, New Zealand Pinot Noir didn’t really find traction with either producers or consumers until more than a century later.

Today, with more than 5,800ha planted (all figures from New Zealand Winegrowers), it is the country’s top red grape variety by far, with approximately 14.5 million bottles exported in 2021.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of 20 marvellous New Zealand Pinot Noirs

It flourishes in New Zealand’s cool South Island regions of Central Otago, Marlborough, North Canterbury with smaller amounts in Nelson. Exciting wines are also being made in the North Island, notably Martinborough in the south, plus a few top producers in Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne.

Thanks to this diversity of regions, climates and soils there is a broad range of styles, from rich, soft, dark wines with prominent oak and warm alcohol, to pale, lean, red-berried Pinots with brisk acidity and a firm structure.

The evolution of Central Otago

In the south of South Island, Central Otago used to be the home of big, oaky, black-fruited and extracted Pinots – which certainly got the region a loyal fanbase. But today more freshness and elegance is evident and the wines are far better balanced. That’s not to say that those overt, bold examples have disappeared – there are plenty of them – but the best wines strike a harmonious chord between ripeness and restraint: plush, silky and perfumed with a firm tannin structure.

There are six sub-regions in Central Otago, which collectively farm about 1,600ha of Pinot Noir. Gibbston Valley is the coolest and highest, delivering lighter but intensely spiced red-berried wines. Bannockburn by comparison is the warmest and driest, giving ripe, full-bodied, black cherry-driven Pinots, while Bendigo, enjoying big diurnal temperature differences on its stony soils, produces vibrant, aromatic styles.

Canterbury’s variety

Stretching 200km down the east coast, North Canterbury boasts alpine foothills and coastal plains, producing diverse Pinot Noirs from its 430ha of vines. The warm, dry, protected Waipara Valley sub-region is gaining the most acclaim, with a long growing season ensuring the spicy, earthy Pinots are expressive, layered and graceful, with good structure, freshness and definition.

Approachable Marlborough

At the top of South Island, Marlborough produces about half of New Zealand’s Pinot Noir, with 2,721ha under vine in 2021. Thanks to better understanding of clones and terroirs, the simple valley floor blends of two decades ago have been replaced by single-vineyard or sub-regional blends from the Awatere, Wairau and particularly Southern Valleys, whose wines are fuller-bodied.

Within their light- to midweight cherry-berry fruit spectrum, Marlborough Pinots have notable freshness and lifted aromas and, in recent years, producers have improved their structure, intensity and intricacy. Perhaps not yet as complex or ageworthy as Pinots from other New Zealand regions, they still offer great drinking pleasure in the short to medium term.

Martinborough’s perfect blend

In the south of North Island, Martinborough is a key sub-region of Wairarapa, with some 60% of the 1,100ha under vine, about half of it (300ha) Pinot Noir. Frequently compared to Burgundy due to its climate, soils and small family-run grower-winemaker estates, its Pinots are making big waves. Simplistically, the wines combine the fragrance and freshness of Marlborough with the succulent dark richness of Central Otago, and a complex, earthy, savoury quality all of their own.

While New Zealand offers a vast range of Pinot Noirs in all styles and prices, these 20 wines are a selection from 45 premium, UK-available wines, tasted non-blind at Decanter’s offices in February 2022.

See tasting notes and scores of 20 New Zealand premium Pinot Noirs

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Shropshire-born Sam Weaver swapped the long-established London wine trade for the nascent grape-growing region of Marlborough, New Zealand in 1988. More than 30 years later, his two sons – Ben and Jack – are taking over the reins of the family‘s biodynamically-farmed Churton estate, which has recently become the country’s first traditionally ploughed vineyard. 

‘I was born and brought up in a rural farming family in Shropshire and always felt more comfortable in the rural and practical realm of winemaking than working in the highfalutin’ London wine trade. We first went to New Zealand to visit the Kiwi side of my family – of which there were many – and we’ve added to the numbers. I do miss Britain’s proper ale and pork pies though!

‘We’ve just become the first New Zealand estate to plough its vineyard by horse and plough. At first we didn’t know if it would be possible, so we acquired an old single-furrow horse-drawn plough from the local agricultural museum. Having proved it worked by dragging it behind a baby Kubota tractor, we replaced the tractor with two Clydesdales: Xena and Gordon.

‘We’re on a mission to reduce our carbon footprint through reducing the use of tractors. By reducing soil compaction, improving water retention and biological activity in the soil we will make better wine as a result.’

‘Most Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc is ubiquitous with its overtly fruity, herbaceous style. They are usually very technically made wines, meaning there has been a lot of intervention. What’s more, they’re often regional blends. At Churton, we produce wines from a single terroir, respecting Sauvignon Blanc through cropping at low yields, before fermenting the wines naturally with indigenous yeasts. The fruit quality is so good that we can successfully make very low-intervention wines of depth, character and restraint.

‘Other than Marlborough my other favourite wine regions are Burgundy and Jurançon. But if I had to choose it would be Jurançon. It is such a beautiful area in the foothills of the Pyrenees. They have such a strong attachment to their land, their culture and their terroir.

‘Speaking of Jurançon, it’s a little-known fact that we are New Zealand’s first and biggest producer of Petit Manseng. In 2007, when we were expanding the vineyard, the nursery let us down with some Pinot Noir and asked if there was any way they could make amends for the mistake. Their first importation of Petit Manseng vines had just been released from quarantine and knowing and loving the variety through my connection with the late Didier Dagueneau [Les Jardins de Babylon], I took every single plant they had.

‘We’re handing over the reins of the business to our sons, Ben and Jack. Having grown up on the farm, they are both passionate about our place, making wine here and have the energy to work hard at it. Importantly they have a connection with the new generation of wine drinkers who appreciate low-intervention wine such as their Natural State range.

‘I’m most proud of breaking the conventional model of winemaking in New Zealand. Designing and planting Churton’s 23ha vineyard on a hillside is a model of what can be done with a farm ecosystem. We can make great wine that speaks of its place.’

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New Zealand Chardonnay has earned its place in your wine cellar, and I encourage you to take another look at what the country has been up to. Diverse styles across a range of prices offer far more texture, concentration and complexity than you may have found in the past.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the top-scoring New Zealand Chardonnay 2020 wines

Chardonnay is grown in all wine regions in New Zealand, reflecting varied soil types and generally cooler-climate conditions. Some 16 clones are available, and average vine age for many growers of the variety is now 25 years, which is also showing positively on the wines released.

The use of amphorae or concrete eggs, as well as a trend towards less new barrel usage in favour of second- and third-year wood, to neutral and even no oak at all, gives winemakers more opportunity to harness a sense of place in their wines.

Producers are also increasingly releasing different expressions of Chardonnay to reflect vineyard and regional character. Organic, biodynamic, indigenous ferment and single- vineyard wines are becoming more common too.

New Zealand has been blessed with three outstanding successive vintages in 2019, 2020 and 2021, across all 10 regions. And the Chardonnays in particular have been fantastic. Of the 39,934ha of producing vines across the country in 2020, just 3,222ha (8.5%) was Chardonnay, and just 230ha of this was from permaculture-managed vineyards – those maintained as an agricultural ecosystem, self-sustaining, using no herbicides or pesticides.

There are currently 50 member producers of the Organic Winegrowers New Zealand organisation, and within this group only 31 make Chardonnay, mostly for still wine production. It is interesting to note that there is an increase in wine businesses converting to or practising permaculture vine-farming in New Zealand – a very positive move if the quality of Chardonnay, as well as other varieties, is indicative of these farming practices.

Year of texture

Chardonnays from the 2020 vintage, which should be well represented in the UK, show more complexity in their aromas, showcasing mineral attributes alongside pure fruit. There’s a riper fruit profile on the palate, too, featuring more defined flavours of grapefruit and lemon to white peach, baked apple and even quince. Baking spices from barrel-toasting is also evident in many, alongside richer apricot and baked custard notes.

Mouthfeel is a feature of many of the 2020 Chardonnays I’ve selected here, thanks to fine tannins from the fruit as well as wood, naturally higher acidity and extended time on lees to contrast the core of fruit.

See all 32 New Zealand Chardonnay 2020 wines tasted for this feature

There’s no mistaking the impact of oak in a few wines, but thankfully this has been used only when the fruit concentration can support it. Many producers are now very judicious with the oak in their Chardonnays, instead letting the impacts of soil, indigenous ferments, lees and excellent fruit speak louder.

Looking forward, 2021 was by no means an easy vintage for New Zealand wine producers, with some challenging weather conditions affecting flowering. An increase in export demand has not been helped by logistical hurdles from shipping lags and Covid-19. Despite all this, the 2021 vintage has delivered some exceptional quality overall from much reduced harvests. Just 23,507 tonnes of Chardonnay was crushed, down by 4,000 tonnes compared to 2020 figures.

New Zealand is not immune to the effects of climate change. Layering in the impact of an already challenging 2021 vintage, along with ozone depletion and a high UV-index, as well as earlier harvest windows, can mean the expressions of Chardonnay you encounter will vary.

If you’ve not seen docu-movie A Seat at the Table (Studio Nash/Republic Films, 2019), then now’s a good time. It strongly suggests that New Zealand Chardonnay is world-class and that the Kiwi wine industry itself needs to focus more attention on the variety. That’s good news for wine lovers.

Cameron Douglas MS’ top New Zealand Chardonnay 2020 wines

The below list features the top-scoring 18 wines, as published in the Expert’s Choice article in Decanter’s April 2022 issue, plus a further 14 wines that also impressed.

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New Zealand might once have been the land where Sauvignon Blanc reigned supreme, but Pinot Noir now stands proudly alongside the white flagship grape as the country’s leading red variety.

Explore the selection below and discover the revolution which, in the past ten years, has rescued New Zealand from red wine obscurity and placed it among the leading producers of one of the world’s fussiest, but most admired, grapes.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of 12 great value New Zealand Pinot Noir to try

A quiet revolution

New Zealand Pinot Noir carved its place on the world stage in a relative short period, due to a serendipitous combination of factors.

The first step was awareness of the country’s potential to produce world class Pinot. Winemakers and consumers, once focused exclusively on Sauvignon Blanc, realised there was more to explore.

This in turn attracted a vibrant community of young, risk-taking producers, keen to experiment with the different terroirs, clones and winemaking approaches. Many of them focused on low intervention and sustainable practices, consolidating an important Kiwi trend.

As existing vineyard plantings matured, the resulting fruit they yielded started to produce wines of greater complexity and longevity, giving winemakers more confidence in the quality and identity of their Pinot Noirs and their ability to rival international counterparts.

Cool climate hotspot

Pinot Noir is mostly grown in New Zealand’s southern regions – Wairarapa, Marlborough, Nelson, North Canterbury and Central Otago.

These areas benefit from a cool climate, high diurnal temperature variations and intense UV exposure, ensuring a long and balanced ripening season.

Central Otago has indeed been lauded as a ‘new Burgundy’, favoured by experts, sommeliers and sustainable wine fans for the elegance and expressiveness of its Pinots. The growing conditions in Central Otago are not dissimilar to those of Burgundy and Willamette Valley, Oregon.

Some benchmark examples of outstanding New Zealand Pinot Noir, such as those produced by Felton Road and Rippon, do command higher prices.

However there’s also outstanding value New Zealand Pinot Noir to be found, as the country produces wines of consistent quality across a variety of price points.

The diversity of microclimates and terroirs in New Zealand results in individual and expressive wines, but there is a common thread to them all: excellent fruit purity, fine yet firm structure, textural presence and a moreish spiciness.

Food pairings – elegantly versatile

The laidback poise and vibrancy of New Zealand Pinots makes them ideal food companions.

Flavour complexity, texture and delicious savouriness mean they can easily handle red meat and hearty stews. On the other hand, the fruit-forwardness and gentle, but refreshing, acidity will balance the richness of oily fish, the earthiness of roast chicken or the smokiness of grilled vegetables.

Lighter examples will benefit from being slightly chilled. Make space in your fridge – New Zealand Pinot may well become your new everyday drinking red of choice.

Value New Zealand Pinot Noir – 12 to try:

Wines shown in score order

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The world’s most southerly wine region, Central Otago covers a large area of diverse soils from broken schist and clays to heavy silt loams, gravels and light sands. Overlay that with a wide range of climatic conditionsand it is easy to understand why Central Otago produces such a diverse range of Pinot Noir styles.

The distinguishing features that make many Central Otago Pinot Noirs stand out from other regional styles are impressive fruit density and a silken texture. Some also boast a Central Otago signature of wild thyme – the herb was planted in the 1850s by gold miners and now covers the hills.

If you want to turn up the volume on fruit flavour, choose wines from the ‘three Bs’: Bannockburn, Bendigo and Cromwell Basin. If you prefer more vibrant and often edgier, high-energy wines, then try Pinot Noir from the cooler sub-regions of Wanaka, Gibbston or Alexandra.

Vintage makes a difference. 2017 saw a small harvest producing top wines. 2018 was the hottest vintage on record, producing many good wines. In contrast, 2019 was a wet vintage, with a good result. In 2020, expect ripe, concentrated wines with good acidities.

Price is a useful, though not infallible guide. More commercial, and cheaper, wines are likely to be a blend of vineyards, shipped in bulk to Europe and bottled. Handmade wines are often from a single organic vineyard, pruned and planted with quality in mind. You can taste the difference. The better, more expensive wines tend to be more ageworthy.

Good: Akarua, Rua Pinot Noir 2019 – 90 points

Better: Burn Cottage, Pinot Noir 2018 – 94 points

Best: Felton Road, Block 5 Pinot Noir 2017 – 100 points

Bob Campbell MW’s Central Otago Pinot Noir picks:

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Sauvignon Blanc is one of the world’s most popular wines. Yet despite the continued popularity of Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé, it was New Zealand that really put the style on the international map.

Over 40 years ago, when the first bottles of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc were produced, this crisp, dry, unoaked, unashamedly fresh and fruity wine style was the perfect antithesis to the woody Australian Chardonnays or sweet Rieslings that provided the bulk of white wine fare in the UK.

Fast forward to today, and more than five million glasses of Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc are enjoyed worldwide every day, according to New Zealand Winegrowers.

While Marlborough still dominates production, and is the style most drinkers associate with New World Sauvignon Blanc, there are excellent examples to be found from Hawke’s Bay, Wairarapa, Nelson, Canterbury and Central Otago too.

And styles are more varied than you might think. Yes, there are still those championing that pungent passion fruit hit that continues to make New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc so popular, but wines using wild yeasts, skin contact, oak ageing and lees work mean there are more complex examples worth exploring.

With screwcaps ensuring freshness and fruit purity, these wines are best enjoyed within one to three years of their vintage, but the best wines will take on appealing smoky, waxy, nutty and earthy notes with careful bottle age, up to a decade or more.

Of course there are plenty of other excellent Sauvignon Blancs beyond New Zealand to enjoy – from the Loire, Bordeaux, Austria, Australia, South Africa, Chile and the US, each with their own distinct character – perfect to toast International Sauvignon Blanc Day (#SauvBlancDay).

Introduction by Tina Gellie in 2020. Wines updated in 2021 – all tasted and scored by Decanter experts. 

20 of the best New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs to enjoy

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As with so many wine regions, New Zealand had its share of new and unexpected challenges for the 2020 harvest in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

But a high-quality fruit harvest across most wine regions, in addition to the New Zealand Government listing the wine sector as an ‘Essential Service’, came as real blessings.

Scroll down for 20 top New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs from the 2020 vintage

The 2020 vintage has been an excellent year for New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, with an increase in plantings, crush, fruit quality, ripeness and flavour. Nearly all of the early-release wines I’ve tasted have punched above their weight (some well above) in terms of concentration, purity, balance and complexity.

Regional signatures are strong, and techniques in the winery such as extended lees contact, less use of new oak and gentle handling has captured more of this variety’s subtleties, minerality and vine maturity.

‘Clean and ripe, good concentration without being overblown, and beautiful fragrance,’ is how Chris Scott, chief winemaker of Church Road Wines, describes his 2020 Sauvignon Blancs.

‘2020 was an exceptional vintage,’ agrees Ben Glover, winemaker at Zephyr Wines in Marlborough. ‘The region expressed itself well, with the mineral, salty, stony soil attributes loud and strong, along with riper yellow fruit flavours – particularly physalis (cape gooseberry) and honeysuckle.’

‘It’s a Goldilocks vintage,’ adds Anna Flowerday, winemaker at Te Whare Ra Vineyard and Winery in Marlborough. ‘Not too cold, not too hot – just right. Favourable conditions during flowering led to a nice, even set and moderate crops.’

New Zealand’s dominant variety

Of New Zealand’s total area under vine planted across all varieties (39,935ha), Sauvignon Blanc continues to command the lion’s share. It grew from 24,605ha in 2019 to 25,160ha in 2020.

A total of 326,058 tonnes of Sauvignon Blanc was crushed – that’s 73.58% of the country’s total – an 8% increase on 2019. Pinot Noir comes in distant second with 7.7% of the crush and Chardonnay with 6.2%.

Marlborough remains the largest regional producer of Sauvignon Blanc, with a whopping 295,301 tonnes crushed, followed by Hawke’s Bay (12,422), Nelson (7,868), Gisborne (4,376), North Canterbury (3,773) and Wairarapa (1,771).

Todd Stevens, winemaker at Neudorf in Nelson, says: ‘2020 was extremely good for Sauvignon Blanc. The mild-to-warm spring, December rains and then a dry summer was a sequence that culminated in near-perfect conditions to ripen fruit and make exacting, delicious wines.’

Misha Wilkinson of Misha’s Vineyard in Central Otago said that while yields were well down in the region, Sauvignon Blanc did very well. ‘We grow ours on a perilously steep slope and unusually this year it was the first variety we picked. It is already showing fabulous flavours.’

An evolving and ageworthy wine

Style-wise, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is evolving. In the 2020 wines I tasted for this article, I noticed more texture, mouthfeel and layering from lees contact. Producers are leaving grape skins in contact with the juice for longer, as well as using older barrels of varying sizes for fermentation, ageing or both.

The classically pungent, herbaceous and tropical style expected of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is easily on show for many of the wines I’ve recommended, but even these are showing more purity from vine age and what is clearly a remarkably good vintage.

Pied de cuve (cultivating the naturally occurring wild yeasts on the grape skins in the vineyard) is proving a valuable technique to produce wines with more depth, character, site expression, texture and flavour.

And while most wine lovers enjoy their New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs within the year of vintage, don’t be afraid to keep them – the style is more ageworthy than you think. Have a look at my drinking windows: many of these wines will develop over the next five to eight years with ease.

New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc 2020

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Every year New Zealand Wines hosts its New Zealand in a Glass tasting in London where wines from across this diverse country are poured – from Central Otago in the south to Northland near the tip of the North Island.

For a time this was very much a two-wine showcase, with Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir strutting their stuff, and little else in between. In recent years, however, the breadth of the Kiwi offering has increased markedly, with big guns like Syrah and Chardonnay suddenly stealing some of the limelight, and lesser-known varieties (certainly for New Zealand) such as Grüner Veltliner and Cabernet Franc vying for attention.Tasting wines from across the spectrum at this year’s event, it’s striking how many previously fledgling varieties are now standing toe-to-toe with Sauvignon and Pinot.

Chardonnay is fast becoming a Kiwi benchmark and is made in myriad styles – from bright, crunchy and fresh to rich, opulent and creamy.

Syrah is widely planted and responsible for some of New Zealand’s most revered reds, but increasingly Bordeaux varietal wines and blends are getting a look in too.

More obscure grapes such as Lagrein and Tempranillo are popping up with increasing regularity and producing some noteworthy wines. The esoteric is ubiquitous, it would seem, even among perennial safe-players like New Zealand.

Chris Wilson’s top New Zealand picks

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New Zealand oaked Sauvignon Blanc: panel tasting results

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Rebecca Gibb MW, Roger Jones and Philip Tuck MW tasted 53 New Zealand oaked Sauvignon Blancs, with 3 Outstanding and 18 Highly Recommended...

Entry criteria: Producers and UK agents were invited to submit their latest-release New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs produced using any level of barrel fermentation or maturation

Scroll down to see the tasting notes & scores

The verdict

With quality on display across the board, this tasting proved that New Zealand’s oaked styles of Sauvignon Blanc deserve attention. Rebecca Gibb MW shares the highlights…

Famed for its distinctive rainbow of flavours and its succulent acidity, Marlborough is the home of New Zealand Sauvignon, representing 89% of the country’s plantings, and its dominance was reflected in this tasting, accounting for three-quarters of entries.

While New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc has made its name in its pure, fruit-filled expression, there have long been barrel-influenced examples since Hunters wowed the crowds at the 1986 Sunday Times Wine Club with its Fumé Blanc.

However, oaked examples have remained a sideshow in the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc story. This tasting showed that the sideshow should be brought on to the main stage, with a very respectable average of 89.2 points scored across a field of more than 50 wines.

There were some sublime examples: Cloudy Bay’s Te Koko, Greywacke’s Wild Sauvignon and the least famous of the Oustanding triumvirate, te Pā’s Oke, which all offered wildly different stylistic interpretations of the relationship between Sauvignon Blanc and oak. But qualitatively, there were few disagreements: harmony, texture and complexity were the name of the game.

Quick link See all 53 wines in the panel tasting

Philip Tuck MW, wine director at Hatch Mansfield, explained: ‘This tasting was all about interplay of oak and varietal character and it’s easy to get it wrong. When you put Sauvignon Blanc in oak you are compromising the high aromatics. Getting it right is a challenge but when you do get it right it’s very nice. There were only a handful of wines that were overoaked.’

It is clear that the use of new oak currently plays a minor role in the most successful oak-influenced Sauvignon Blanc styles, with secondfill or older barrels chosen for their contribution to texture rather than flavour. Barrel fermentation followed by maturation tends to produce a more harmonious expression – a method common to many of the finest wines in the tasting.

However, the varying approaches reflected the flexibility of New World winemaking: levels of oak ranged from 2.5% to 100%, and new oak proportions from zero to 100%.

There were just three wines that took a leaf out of the Bordeaux (and Margaret River) book, blending Semillon with the Sauvignon Blanc: Te Mata’s Cape Crest, Seresin’s Marama and Hans Herzog’s Sur Lie included a small splash of the rich, weighty variety. But the panel was united in its belief that this pairing could be worth exploring as New Zealand moves into Sauvignon Blanc 2.0.

Tuck noted: ‘I’m surprised there were no more with Semillon in the blend – why not add some?’ But who’s going to buy these top-rated wines?

Wearing his restaurateur’s hat, Roger Jones of the The Harrow at Little Bedwyn, commented: ‘Selling wines over the bar, people want clean Sauvignon Blanc, but if it’s got oak and complexity they are lost. You really need to focus on it and have it with food, which is not what New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is necessarily known for.’

With his business hat on, Tuck added: ‘Commercially it’s a risk. The winemakers are adding cost to the wines because they are releasing them later.’

These styles are not destined to be New Zealand’s bread and butter, but for restaurants and interested consumers looking for the next stage in their Sauvignon Blanc experience, there is a diverse array of aromatics and textures on offer.

The scores

53 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 3

Highly Recommended 18

Recommended 30

Commended 2

Fair 0

Poor 0

Faulty 0

Top New Zealand oaked Sauvignon Blancs from the panel tasting:

See all 53 wines from this panel tasting

About New Zealand oaked Sauvignon Blanc

New Zealand oaked Sauvignon Blanc While its claim to fame may be fresh and fruity Sauvignon, New Zealand’s winemakers are now experimenting with more varied and nuanced styles. Rebecca Gibb MW reports

If you think New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc can only be fashioned in one style it’s time to taste the country’s leading variety in its increasingly varied interpretations. The fruity yet green style for which the country has become world famous is still a mainstay, but winemakers are now seeking to make Sauvignon Blanc that is less reliant on primary fruit aromas and more interesting texturally.

Sauvignon Blanc producers are achieving a sophisticated, savoury alternative using a variety of methods, which include allowing wild yeast to do its job on rather cloudy juice in tank, French oak barrel or both. There’s also a small but significant number of high-quality producers playing with foudres and the odd amphora. Sacred Hill and Cloudy Bay were early adopters of barrel fermentation in the 1990s but as Tim Heath, senior winemaker at Cloudy Bay, explains: ‘Barrel-fermented Sauvignon Blanc styles are not as easy to make as you think and can easily become overblown. It becomes quite disjointed with oak and overpowers the fruit. It’s a difficult balance to strike.’ Indeed, the natural fruitiness of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc can be difficult to tame, which can lead to a wrestling match between the grape and the wood.

Subtle expression

Experience and research has shown that picking Sauvignon Blanc by hand, rather than machine harvesting, followed by whole bunch pressing diminishes the level of thiols responsible for the exuberant aromatics reminiscent of passionfruit and herbaceous boxwood. A more subtle Sauvignon expression better integrates with oak – when oak, and particularly new oak, is only one part of the fermentation story: Auntsfield, for example combines conventionally fermented tank parcels with barrel-fermented whole bunch lots to achieve harmony in its single-vineyard Sauvignon Blanc. What’s more, allowing partial malolactic fermentation can also reduce the flamboyancy of fruit – Greywacke allows two-thirds of its highly successful Wild Sauvignon to undergo conversion – but it’s a fine balancing act. Lees stirring also adds an extra dimension to Sauvignon Blanc as we know it, contributing weight, texture and more complex layers.

In the world of Sauvignon, Marlborough unoaked Sauvignon Blancs are inimitable. The barrel-fermented styles are idiosyncratic too: they’re not as razor fine as those of Sancerre, but look positively vibrant next to a Californian Fumé Blanc. While they share a similar weight to Bordeaux whites, New Zealand Sauvignon tends to offer more tropical fruit and lacks the textural, grassy elements that Semillon brings to Bordeaux blends.

Increasingly sophisticated Sauvignon Blanc is emerging from the bottom of the earth. If you thought you knew New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and have previously dismissed it for being overly fruity, perhaps it’s time to think again and try some of the alternative styles that Kiwi winemakers are now dishing up.

NZ Sauvignon Blanc: The Facts

1975 First Sauvignon Blanc planted in Marlborough

1979 First Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc produced by Montana

2002 Sauvignon Blanc becomes New Zealand’s most planted variety

2018 Sauvignon Blanc covers 23,102ha, representing 60% of New Zealand’s vineyard area and 86% of exports

(Source: NZ Winegrowers Annual Report 2018)

NZ Sauvignon Blanc: Know your vintages

2018 Hottest summer on record, leading to early ripening. Coastal regions affected by ex-tropical cylones in February, delaying harvest and elevating botrytis pressure. Ripe Sauvignon.

2017 Difficult season with a cool start and poor summer. Wet, warm and cloudy autumn created botrytis pressure. Early picked crops were the most successful.

2016 Record crop. Warm, often humid. Harvest period was dry and sunny. Excellent whites and highly attractive reds.

2015 Dry and warm. Small, low yielding crop after early frost and cool flowering. Ripe, perfumed and fully flavoured wines.

2014 Record early vintage. Dry and warm summer with little disease pressure. Excellent wines across the board.

2013 Touted as the vintage of a lifetime with a warm, incredibly dry summer and autumn. Ripe, concentrated wines across the North and South Islands.

See all of the wines tasted here

The judges

Rebecca Gibb MW

Gibb spent six years living in New Zealand, where she became a Master of Wine, graduating top of her class and winning the Madame Bollinger medal for excellence in tasting. Her first book The Wines of New Zealand was published in 2018. She also runs wine events and has a consultancy business The Drinks Project.

Roger Jones

Jones and his wife Sue own The Harrow at Little Bedwyn restaurant, where he combines chef duties with a love of wine. Jones frequently travels to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, food and wine matching; he set up The Tri Nations Wine Challenges to promote wines from these countries.

Philip Tuck MW

Philip Tuck MW has been in the wine trade for over 30 years, since joining Avery’s in Bristol in 1986. He then worked for wineries in various countries including New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the US, Chile and Italy. Tuck became an MW in 1999 and is currently wine director at Hatch Mansfield.

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A recent Loire vs Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc masterclass, hosted by Rebecca Gibb MW and Jamie Goode, set out to discover the differences between the two key Sauvignon-producing regions at opposite ends of the world.

Jointly organised by Sopexa, Central Loire Valley Wines, Loire Valley Wines (yes, two different trade bodies represent the Loire!) and New Zealand Wines, the blind tasting of 12 Sauvignon Blancs pitted one Loire and one Marlborough wine against each other in each of the six pairs.

It was a fairly tough tasting, with styles ranging from green and crisp to creamy and oaky, but the wines in five of the pairs were distinct enough to enable correct identification – which will surely be a relief to the terroirists out there.

How to tell the difference

Loire Sauvignon Blanc occupies the green fruit spectrum (think apple, gooseberry and cut grass), and can be floral, steely, zingy, flinty or even slightly peachy, depending on which appellation it comes from.

Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc tends to be more pungent and intensely flavoured, still with green fruit at its core but filled out with riper, tropical fruit flavours.

About Loire Sauvignon

There are around 123,000ha of Sauvignon Blanc planted throughout the world, of which around 10,000ha are in the Loire and 20,600ha in Marlborough.

The Central Loire, where 50% of all Loire Sauvignon Blanc is produced, is mostly composed of chalky marl capped by Portlandian limestone, although Touraine sits on part of the so-called Paris Basin, which is a limestone over clay-flint composition.

Touraine’s reputation for producing lower-priced wines has meant that land has remained attractively cheap, and it is now benefitting from a new wave of young winemakers keen to make names for themselves. Keep an eye on this appellation if you like Sauvignon.

About Marlborough Sauvignon

Marlborough’s free-draining soils are mostly sandy loam over deep gravel. The region experiences more maritime influence than the Sauvignon-producing areas of the Loire, benefitting from cooling sea breezes.

However, the ozone layer is thin over New Zealand, contributing to 40% more UV radiation than is typical at that latitude. This intensity of light, combined with the free-draining soils, requires irrigation in many cases.

Sauvignon Blanc differences – wine by wine:

The wines were blind-tasted in pairs, in the order they appear below.

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If Forrest Gump had preferred wine to running, he might have said ‘Central Otago seasons are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get’.

From one year to the next, locals have come to expect the unexpected, from scorching temperatures in spring to snow in summer – and the 2017 vintage offered its own peculiarities.It was a cool start to the spring and summer, with poor flowering leading to small berries and millerandage (inconsistent bunch development).This resulted in lower bunch weights, so the final crop was around 10-15% smaller than normal – whatever normal is in Central Otago!

Pete Bartle of Vinpro, a contract winemaking facility for a number of well-known brands in Central Otago including Wooing Tree, Grasshopper Rock and Archangel, says: ‘2017 was one of those years where you worry about job security – I thought we would run out of season [and have no fruit]!

‘It had been so cold – normally you get some early heat in Central and we didn’t have any. We went into February and it was dragging. In warmer seasons we have the [bird] nets on in the first week of February, but on this occasion it was well into February.’

In Alexandra, the team at Grasshopper Rock thinned the crop in January due to concerns there wouldn’t be enough heat to ripen the fruit on the vine.

Managing director Phil Handford says: ‘It was one of the coldest vintages on record but in late February we started to get the heat we needed and we ended up picking at the same time as we had in 2016, because of the smaller crop load.’

As a result of the season’s small berries there was a high skin-to-juice ratio, imbuing the wines with deeper hues and higher tannin levels. Stems were not in favour in 2017 fermentation tanks, as there was a higher proportion of stems to the smaller than usual grapes.

Matt Dicey, winemaker at Mount Difficulty, says: ‘We used less whole-bunch in 2017 because we didn’t think there was as much ripeness in the phenolics.

‘Slightly lower pH and higher acidity is part and parcel of 2017, so the tannins could be assertive and we didn’t want to extract too much.’

The resulting wines are distinctive and characterful – fresh, fragrant and fruity, with common themes of raspberries, blackberries and violets. There’s a brightness to this vintage and a sense of tension not seen in warmer years.

It’s also encouraging to see ripe tannins despite the cooler season, and greater integration of oak. Dicey adds: ‘As the vines age we see more natural tannin coming from the seeds and skins – we don’t need to work hard to look for it.

‘The vein of fruit sits underneath it but there’s texture and complexity coming through. It’s a less-is-more philosophy and we are pushing new boundaries.’

Central Otago Pinot Noir 2017 top picks:

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Decanter's Tina Gellie picks your next New Zealand Pinots to try...

Pinot Noir grows at its best in cooler climates – think Burgundy and Champagne – which is why it fares well in New Zealand, especially in regions such as Marlborough and Central Otago.

New Zealand has developed a reputation for the quality of its Pinot Noir in recent years, and they can offer great value for money compared to the old world competition, typically offering a fragrant aroma with flavours of cherry, raspberry and brambles.

The following wines showcase some top picks for drinking in 2019 and beyond, from the full-bodied, rich expressions of Central Otago to the weighty concentration of Martinborough and the balanced elegance of Marlborough.

See also: Why you need to think again about New Zealand wine

Rebecca Gibb MW says ‘there’s plenty to be excited about… from Martinborough and Central Otago in particular,’ in her New Zealand 2016 reds vintage report.

New Zealand Pinot Noir wines to seek out:

See also:

A wine lover’s guide to Hawke’s Bay

New Zealand whites: 2018 vintage report

Top New Zealand Pinot Noirs for your cellar

California’s Foley Family Wines has been cleared by officials in New Zealand to buy Pinot Noir producer Mt Difficulty for around US$35 million.

New Zealand’s Overseas Investment Office (OIO) said it has approved Foley’s purchase of Mt Difficulty for NZ$52m (US$35m).

The deal includes 70ha of freehold land and 110ha of leasehold land in Central Otago.

California-based Foley Family Wines is majority owned by Bill Foley and his wife, Carol, and already has several New Zealand wine interests. The group also bought Diageo’s Chalone Estate Vineyard in California in 2016, while Bill Foley owns the Las Vegas Golden Knights hockey team.

Mt Difficulty offers a major foothold in Central Otago, a key region for premium Pinot Noir.

The producer is particularly known for its Pinot Noir, including single vineyard bottlings, and its Roaring Meg label, which includes Pinot Noir and Gris, Riesling, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.

OIO officials said that they spent eight-and-a-half months considering the Foley acquisition plan. It said that the firm was required to make changes to some of its proposals, but did not specify what.

It added that Foley plans to expand the Mt Difficulty restaurant and cellar door, and will seek to expand exports of Mt Difficulty wines.

Separately, the OIO said that Foley intended to expand its existing Te Kairanga estate in Martinborough and expand production capacity at its Grove Mill winery in Marlborough.

You can't mention Greywacke without mentioning Cloudy Bay...

And mentioning Cloudy Bay brings history – the weight of New Zealand’s fate once seemingly hung on its shoulders.

Of course, brands such as Brancott and Villa Maria have more than played their parts in the high-volume arena, but Cloudy Bay was at the forefront of the country’s transformation into an international power in the ‘fine wine’ sphere, particularly in the case of its Sauvignon Blanc.

Now that its reputation is firmly in the bag – wine exports have been increasing every year for the last two decades and more, and New Zealand claims one of the highest average bottle prices of all wine-producing countries – certain winemakers have begun to explore alternative expressions of the styles the country’s success has been built on.

Enter Kevin Judd. The man who spent 25 years making Cloudy Bay – and therefore a key player in New Zealand’s formative years – established his own label, Greywacke, in 2009. He doesn’t own his own winery, instead making use of the facilities at Dog Point Winery in the lower Brancott Valley.

His label is named after the sedimentary greywacke pebbles which are evident in the main Rapaura vineyard but, as Kevin was keen to point out at a tasting earlier this week, ‘Greywacke isn’t about a bit of earth’. Asked how he selects his grapes, Kevin sums up the whole spirit of Greywacke in one sentence: ‘I do select, but there’s no recipe’. A winemaker who sits back and lets the wine do the talking.

And the results are intriguing. His winemaking may be seen as a brave step too far by some; if it ain’t broke, why try and fix it? However, his time at Cloudy Bay has clearly given him the freedom to experiment, and this is what he brings to Greywacke. The range of seven wines is a foray into a world of barrel-aged Rieslings, natural fermentations and just a bit of luck.

Kevin was in the UK to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Greywacke, and to mark the occasion we were treated to two examples of each of the seven wines – the first vintage of each wine, and the most recent. It was interesting to see not only how well they can age, but also how he has refined the winemaking processes for each after years of trial and error.

Greywacke: Then and now

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Thanks to one of the hottest summers in New Zealand's history, there is a clear vintage expression across both the reds and whites from 2018 says Rebecca Gibb MW, who reports on the weather conditions across the country and selects her top white wines from recent tastings…

Triathletes clad in neoprene return to the open waters of New Zealand’s coast each November donning a couple of swimming hats to avoid ice-cream headaches, but in late 2017 the waters were so unseasonably warm even the wetsuits could be comfortably ditched in favour of a pair of budgie smugglers.

Scroll down for Rebecca Gibb MW’s top New Zealand white wines from 2018

It wasn’t the swimmers’ imagination. A so-called marine heatwave meant that water temperatures were between 2 and 4°C above average and this was the main driver behind the hottest summer in New Zealand since records began in 1909. Temperatures across New Zealand were 2.1˚C higher than the 30-year average (1981-2010), pushing the balmy summer of 1934/35 out of the record books. The heatwave began in November, which is not technically summer in New Zealand. In Central Otago’s Cromwell, there were 23 consecutive days above 25˚C up to 10 December.

And the crazy barbecue weather kept on coming. Hot and dry weather – Auckland received just 9% of its average rainfall in December – meant vines successfully flowered and there was an abundant crop ready to ripen early: on the eve of 2018, the vines were tracking 10-14 days ahead of their ‘usual’ schedule.

But weather can be unpredictable when you’re a remote island at the bottom of the world and February brought the remnants of two tropical cyclones. The first, named Fehi (1 February), broke the heatwave. Felton Road’s owner Nigel Greening says: ‘2018 was bewildering: if we had not had the cyclone come through and break the heatwave, we would have been in deep [trouble].’

That said, many Central Otago growers report it was their earliest-ever harvest. Amisfield picked its Riesling on 5 March – three weeks earlier than normal. Winemaker Stephanie Lambert says: ‘2018 epitomised Central Otago’s unpredictability more than ever. It was hot, it was cold, we were worried about sunburn, lack of sun, lack of wine, low acidity, disease, lack of flavour, it had it all for us.’

Meanwhile, cyclone Gita (20 February) dropped 300% of the South Island’s monthly rainfall in just 18 hours. While the North Island’s wine regions of Hawke’s Bay, Gisborne and Wairarapa dodged the worst of Gita’s wrath, the country’s most prolific region, Marlborough, was affected. For the early ripeners this caused a few headaches but the Sauvignon Blanc berries were still tough at this stage.

Vintners were on high alert for botrytis with high humidity and the February deluge. Picking was delayed until March but the temperatures remained high: the average temperature in Marlborough in March was 22.3˚C compared with 16.3˚C in March 2017. Nights were unseasonably warm.

The cyclones also affected the crop level. At 419,000 tonnes, 2018 is the fourth-largest harvest on record but it is well below initial expectations. In the glass, you can expect Sauvignon Blancs with ripe flavour expression, broader palate weight, gentler acidity and immediate accessibility. Vintners report that Pinot Noir is flavoursome and lush with lower acidity and alcohols nudging 14% and beyond.

Will it be a great year? It is difficult to say at this early stage but they will show a clear vintage expression when compared with the far cooler 2017 season.

Rebecca Gibb MW’s top New Zealand white wines from 2018

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At Felton Road's 21st anniversary tasting in London, Rebecca Gibb MW found out how its biodynamic Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines have evolved over time...

The past two decades at Felton Road are a microcosm of Central Otago and the wider New Zealand wine scene. 

The vines have matured along with their guardians, making increasingly sophisticated wine – that’s why the anniversary vertical tasting did not trace its roots all the way to 1997.

‘By starting with 2005, we are able to show a reasonable amount of vine age and 2005 was our first full year of biodynamics,’ explained Greening. 

As the tasting crossed different vintages and Bannockburn sites, covering its five Pinot Noirs and Chardonnay trio, Felton Road’s seasons were recounted in the glass — from the cool 2005 harvest and the warmer conditions of 2008, through to the ‘extremely erratic’ year of 2017.

Having ploughed their attention into the vineyard in the noughties, the vines are reportedly better behaved, which has enabled a more minimalist approach in the winery.

While Felton’s use of oak has never been out of kilter, like many other New Zealand producers, its vine age means the grapes have naturally ripe tannins and recent wines appear to require less new oak to provide structure.

Vintage highlights

A sense of balance, purity and increasing delicacy has emerged across the range. Despite vintage variations, tasting seven of its Block 3 Pinot Noir showed clear site expression in its seductive style.

While 2010 and 2012 have been much lauded, the region has had an impressive run of vintages. Since 2012 there’s been ‘no excuse’ for wines that are anything less than excellent, according to Greening. 

The 2011 vintage has suffered middle child syndrome but at this tasting, Block 5 was intriguing and tautly wound.

Similarly, the stellar 2012 harvest means the 2013 vintage is sometimes overlooked in Central Otago, but once again Block 5 showed its class: it is wonderfully fragrant, vibrant and – most importantly – delicious to drink.

Although Central Otago is known as a Pinot Noir producer with a little Riesling on the side, around 3% of its majestic landscape is home to Chardonnay vines.

Felton Road is perhaps its most renowned maker, crafting very low intervention cuvées, including the not-so sexily entitled Blocks 2 and 6. 

Perhaps most surprising was the 2007: it was not as refined as later examples but it was still not yet fully mature.  Could it be the screwcaps? Central Otago may be awash with pesky rabbits, but this is a premox-free zone.

Felton Road vertical tasting:

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Ata Rangi McCrone Vineyard: Tasting the difference

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How different can wines made from grapes grown on opposite sides of the road be? Rebecca Gibb MW found out during a visit to Ata Rangi in Martinborough, New Zealand, and reports on her favourite Pinot Noir wines tasted.

The year was 1988 and the wine world had only just discovered the electrifying flavours of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

The idea that this tiny, lamb-chop shaped country at the end of the earth would soon become a reputed Pinot Noir producer seemed as likely as Italy beating the All Blacks.

We might still be waiting for the latter, but many of us wine lovers are now thankful that Clive Paton sold his milking cows and bought a piece of land in the then-rural backwater of Martinborough to grow Pinot Noir.

Scroll down to see Rebecca’s Ata Rangi Pinot Noir tasting notes

Paton and his wife Phyll attended the International Pinot Noir Celebration (IPNC) in Oregon in 1988 as part of a Kiwi contingent, where they met Don and Carole McCrone.

This meeting led to a long-lasting friendship and the beginnings of a cross-hemisphere collaboration: Don, a politics professor turned grape grower in Carlton, Oregon, decided he too wanted to make Pinot Noir in New Zealand.

The McCrone Vineyard

In 2001, a 4ha block neighbouring Ata Rangi was up for grabs and the McCrones purchased it with a little help from their friends, who drove in the vineyard posts and planted a selection of Pinot clones.

The first release – a tiny bottling in 2006 to test the waters – was met with critical acclaim. But it has not been produced every year, with the fruit often making its way into Ata Rangi’s second-tier Pinot, Crimson, while waiting for the vines to mature.

In 2012, the McCrone’s sold their eponymous vineyard to Ata Rangi due to health reasons.

A string of superlative New Zealand growing seasons from 2013 to 2016 has provided four enigmatic single-vineyard bottlings, making an interesting comparison to Ata Rangi’s ‘estate’ Pinot Noir – a flagship blend of fruit from vineyards surrounding McCrone.

A Burgundian comparison

Despite being just across the road from Ata Rangi, the McCrone Vineyard is a pretty unique site on the Martinborough terrace, as winemaker Helen Masters explains: ‘There’s about 800mm of clay before the gravels, so it’s markedly different to our other vineyards.’ The result is a richer, rounder expression than the Ata Rangi Pinot Noir, with cocoa-powder-like tannins.

The classic Ata Rangi Pinot Noir, with its older vines, offers finer detail and greater nuance, but the comparison between the pair is almost Burgundian: the vines are all within spitting distance, they are tended and vinified in the same way, and yet the personality of the two sites is clear to taste.

The Ata Rangi Pinot Noir remains the superlative wine, but don’t forget that the vines have a 20-year headstart on those at McCrone.

While the late Spanish filmaker Luis Bunuel once famously said, ‘age doesn’t matter, unless you’re a cheese’, he could have appended that quote with ‘or a vine’.

Ata Rangi factfile

Founded 1980

Founder Clive Paton

Total hectares 32

Key named vineyards:

Home Block (Pinot Noir)

McCrone (Pinot Noir)

Craighall (Chardonnay and Riesling)

Lismore (Pinot Gris)

Petrie (Chardonnay)

Kotinga (Pinot Noir)

Di Mattina (Pinot Noir)

Comparing vineyards:

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Central Otago: Everything to know and wines to try

One of the most southerly wine regions on the planet, New Zealand’s Central Otago is home to dramatic scenery and elegant Pinot Noir. Anne Krebiehl MW takes us on a tour and highlights the producers and wines you need to know...

‘We are the driest, we are the coldest, we are the hottest. There is something striking and extreme about the climate here.’

This is how winemaker Lucie Lawrence describes Central Otago. She is right. Everything about this remote region is intense: its stark beauty of jagged peaks, naked rock, crystalline sky and the turquoise of deep, glacier-fed lakes.

Everything seems heightened, the freshness of the air, the fierceness of the sun, the heart- stopping briskness of the cold water.

Scroll down for Krebiehl’s pick of Central Otago

‘All of those things make our Pinots what they are and work for other varieties, too,’ says Lawrence, who runs Aurum Wines in Lowburn with her husband Brook. It is these extremes that put Central Otago Pinot Noir on the map.Today, however, they are channelled into poise and a stylistic shift is in full swing.The rise of Central Otago as a wine region is as extraordinary as its landscape. Barely 20ha of vineyards in 1990 grew to 280ha by 2000 and to 1,921ha today.Of that total, 1,500ha is Pinot Noir – that’s 79%. ‘I am blown away,’ says Alan Brady of Gibbston Valley Winery, who planted the first commercial vineyard in Gibbston Valley in 1983. ‘We’ve grown a lot in a very short time,’ he adds.

Pinot country

For Brady, Central Otago and Pinot Noir have gone hand in hand. ‘We were very lucky that one of the first varieties we planted experimentally was Pinot Noir. It put its hand up from year one almost. It grew easily and when it started producing fruit, it ripened more consistently than almost anything else. So it’s nothing to do with our wisdom or insight. It was just that Pinot Noir indicated that it found a home here – that was our good fortune,’ he notes. In soils of deep silty loams, alluvial gravels, schist, quartz, sand, clay and loess, cultivating Pinot meant hard work and a steep learning curve.

At times it also demanded nerves of steel, in this semi-continental climate that is a hub for skiing in winter and watersports in summer. High diurnal swings and vintage variation are a given. ‘There have been no two vintages I’ve worked here that have been even remotely similar,’ explains Paul Pujol, winemaker at Prophet’s Rock in Bendigo. ‘With time you get more relaxed about that. When I first got here it snowed in the vineyard as vines were just coming into flowering. But despite cold spells and heatwaves we are able to successfully ripen Pinot in all of these vintages, even with seasons that are dramatically different.’

Central Otago at a glance

Location In the south of New Zealand’s South Island, Central Otago is one of the world’s most southerly wine regions. Its main population hubs are Queenstown, Wanaka and Cromwell

Sub-regions Wanaka, Bannockburn, Gibbston Valley, Alexandra, Bendigo and Cromwell/ Lowburn/Pisa

Coming of age

By the turn of the millennium, Pinot Noir had almost become the subject of Central Otago’s second gold rush. Lots of investment flooded in, then ended in 2008 with the global financial crisis. For Rudi Bauer, viticultural veteran, biodynamic pioneer and winemaker at Quartz Reef in Bendigo, this abrupt halt to plantings represented a great opportunity. ‘It meant that the average age of vineyards finally grew, instead of getting younger and younger. Today people have established vineyards where they get real site expression.’ Looking back he notes a distinct shift in perspective: ‘Now that we have a sense of maturity we no longer need to be loud. Now winemakers are as humble as the viticulturists always were. They listen to the vine.’

The best among them know how to farm in order to channel Central Otago’s undoubted ripeness into brilliance: ‘I grew up here, eating plums, nectarines, peaches, with the juice running down my arms,’ recalls Andrew Donaldson, owner of Akitu in Wanaka. ‘You can’t ignore fruit in Central Otago and you shouldn’t, but you cannot make huge fruit bombs. What you want is subtle, elegant.’

Francis Hutt, winemaker at Carrick Wines in Bannockburn, comments: ‘I am now seeing earlier picking, more finesse. We are no longer trying to prove to the world that our wines can age – we know that they do. So we can relax a little in our extraction. I can see more elegance with less time on skins, less new oak and fewer punch-downs.’

Lawrence of Aurum continues: ‘We are all evolving our style. Our understanding and connection to the land is deepening. There are no massive changes, just gentle evolution.’ Peter Bartle, who makes wines for numerous clients at Central Otago’s custom crush facility VinPro agrees. ‘When it comes to Pinot Noir we are certainly using a lot less new oak and while I’ve always preferred picking early, now that’s the norm,’ he says. But Bartle also calls out on Central Otago’s other grapes: ‘Riesling is just amazing – lots of citrus – and Chardonnay is starting to do very well in Central Otago.’ He also talks about an evolution of dry, textured Pinot Noir rosés.

Site selection

With so much focus on understanding sites, the distinct sub-regionality of Central Otago has also become clear: Gibbston Valley, Bannockburn, Alexandra, Bendigo, Wanaka and Cromwell/Pisa/Lowburn are all distinct in terms of climate, aspect, altitude and exposure. Gibbston Valley along the Kawarau River is the coolest and highest; while Bannockburn, Bendigo and Alexandra are the warmest. Altitude also comes into play, with north- facing hillsides exploited for their sunshine and ventilation.

‘In the early days we thought Central Otago was one region, but as we started seeing fruit from these different vineyards we realised it’s a number of different sub-regions. As a winemaker it’s lovely seeing that, it’s exciting,’ says Grant Taylor of Valli Vineyards, who has made wine in Central Otago since the 1980s and was among the first to draw attention to the sub-regions with his separate bottlings from Bannockburn and Gibbston Valley.

Some winemakers, such as Blair Walter of Felton Road, would like to formalise this sooner rather than later. ‘The winemakers of Bannockburn are certainly interested to pursue an application for a GI [Geographical Indication] for the sub-region. We think we owe it to our customers and businesses to define the sub-regions and where they start and stop,’ Walter explains. ‘I think we are at the appropriate moment now, especially for a sub-region like Bannockburn where the boundaries are relatively easy to define. Some of the other sub-regions are also easy, others will be a bit trickier.’

Contentious as any mapping always is, it surely is just another stage in Central Otago’s development. Taylor sums the situation up: ‘It’s always been changing. I like what’s happening: more people coming here, taking the wine to a wider market. But it’s still an evolving region, which makes it interesting, seeing it grow, develop and change – and that is still going on.’

Cental Otago: six names to know

Rippon

The Mills family, owners of a sheep station on the poor schist soils of Wanaka, were pioneers of Central Otago viticulture. What began with a few rows of vines in 1975, led to the first commercial vintage in 1989. Their 1990 vintage, made by a young Rudi Bauer (now Quartz Reef), lured the Dicey brothers of Ceres Wines and Blair Walter, winemaker at Felton Road, to Central Otago. The vineyards are farmed biodynamically. Older Rippon vintages are spectacular.

Ceres Wines

This is the family project of Matt and James Dicey, who until recently were winemaker and viticulturist, respectively, for Mt Difficulty, where they’d worked since the 1990s. Here they’re able to focus on single sites in Bannockburn and have dialled extraction and oak right back to make expressive, elegant wines.

Lowburn Ferry

This estate has recently come under the ownership of Smith & Sheth, a new project by Kiwi Steve Smith MW, co-founder of Craggy Range, and US billionaire investor Brian Sheth. With proper funding, especially into the vineyards and conversion to biodynamic farming under star viticulturist, Nick Paulin, this is set to blossom.

Akitu

Planted in 2002 at an elevation of 380m in Wanaka, these vineyards are marginal. But you know that all the frost risk is worth it when you taste the wines. After a career in investment management, founder Andrew Donaldson waited 10 years after planting before launching his Akitu label in 2012. ‘I’m from Otago and always needed to return,’ he says. ‘I was just lucky, I guess, that it became one of the most interesting places in the world to grow Pinot, my favourite variety.’

Mount Edward

Winemaker Duncan Forsyth has been pushing boundaries for a while. His flair for Pinot Noir is well known; his mastery of Riesling is evident. He continues to fine-tune both: there is more whole bunch in the Pinot while Riesling gets more skin contact. He’s also now having fun with sulphur-free Gamay, pet-nat Albariño and orange wines. Recently he’s also dabbled with vermouth, based on Riesling and Chenin Blanc, with elderflower as the primary botanical.

Burn Cottage

This biodynamic venture in the Pisa Range, owned by the Sauvage family from Kansas, has Pinot legend Ted Lemon from California as its consultant. First planted in 2003, the wines are now made by Claire Mulholland. ‘The vines are now well established and have been showing wonderful individual block characters over the years,’ she says. She’s excited about a new site, christened Burn Cottage Sauvage Vineyard. ‘It’s a 5.8ha Pinot Noir vineyard along Felton Road. We’ve started biodynamic practices already and envisage the possibility of making a single- vineyard Pinot from there.’

See Krebiehl’s pick of Central Otago

Anne Krebiehl MW is a freelance wine writer, educator, consultant and judge

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‘The speed of change in New Zealand wine leaves me breathless,’ writes Elin McCoy after visiting the country for tastings earlier this year.

Just before the annual Central Otago Pinot Noir festival in January, I was dutifully working my way through an Air New Zealand tasting in a boring hotel conference room in Queenstown, when I was bowled over by a sparkling wine I’d never heard of before.

The non-vintage No1 Family Estate, Reserve from Marlborough had the fresh, complex, salty, biscuity-rich finesse you find only in Champagne – and very good Champagne at that.

The experience reminded me how much pleasure I get from an unexpected wine discovery, and how many surprises New Zealand always seems to deliver.

These start with the country itself, a place where you feel you can glimpse the planet’s beginnings in landscapes heaved up by earthquakes and scoured by glaciers.

Vines hug slopes of steep, jagged peaks, sit above long shining lakes and ocean coves, and lie next to deep rocky gorges with rushing water so clear you feel recharged just looking at it. The sky, with its intense, clear light and ever-changing swirls of clouds, looks washed by wind from far, far away.

It all leaves you a little breathless, as does the surprising speed with which the wine industry has changed and grown since my last visit to New Zealand in 2009.

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I caught up with the maker of the No1 Reserve, Daniel Le Brun, at a sparkling wine brunch in Marlborough later in my trip. A native of Champagne (where his family had made Champagne for generations), Le Brun arrived in Blenheim in 1978, well before the region surprised the world with its new-style Sauvignon Blanc.

Within two hours, so he says, he was convinced he could make sparkling wine there. He’d trained with his father and grandfather in Champagne, and, he chuckles, ‘I was the renegade, the first to leave since 1642’.

New Zealand’s pioneer of making solely ‘traditional method’ cuvées learned to adapt to the country’s climate while keeping Champagne yeasts and ‘other technique secrets’. His first winery, which still bears his name, was sold in a complicated takeover in 1996; his first cuvée under the No1 Family Estate label debuted three years later.

An impromptu sampling – ranging from the quality, elegance and layered chalky crispness of the basic No1 cuvée, to a fragrant rosé, to the 2009 special cuvées Virginie (named for his daughter) and Adele (his wife) – showed the region’s potential for great sparkling wine.

Elsewhere, the number of fascinating whites carried me beyond the country’s signature grassy Sauvignon Blanc to Albarinos, Gruner Veltliners, and a salty Pegasus Bay Sauvignon/Semillon whose pairing with foraged, yellow-eyed mullet was one of the best of my stay.

Naturally, I discovered some great Pinot Noir producers. In Martinborough, I was wowed by multiple vintages of pure, intense, savoury Pinots made by the extraordinary Japanese diplomat-turned-winemaker Hiro Kusuda. Their hallmarks are precision and elegance, also found in his luminous Rieslings and spicy, seductive Syrahs.

Just north of Christchurch (still recovering from the 2016 earthquake), in North Canterbury, I went truffle hunting, learning that there are 50 truffle producers in the country.

But the wine surprise was the blindingly white pure limestone I saw in Bell Hill winery’s vineyards. Once a farm with an old quarry, it’s now a New Zealand version of a tiny Burgundian domaine, where Sherwyn Veldhuizen and Marcel Giesen make some of the most prized Pinot Noirs in the country.

There’s always a frisson of enthusiasm when new wines challenge my previous assumptions. Sadly, many wine drinkers prefer to stick to the same old regions and grapes.

Large commercial wineries use focus groups to tailor their products because so many consumers feel the way my aunt does about Kendall-Jackson’s Vintners Reserve Chardonnay: she wants to know exactly what tastes she’ll get in her glass.

But wines that comfort through familiarity amount to an already known universe. Been there, tasted that. Welcoming surprise means being open to savouring the future. And in New Zealand that looks very, very exciting.

Elin McCoy is an award-winning journalist and author who writes for Bloomberg News

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New Zealand 2016: A record crop. Warm and often humid. Harvest period was dry and sunny. Excellent whites and highly attractive reds

3/5

It’s all about Pinot Noir, and a small amount of Syrah, when it comes to the 2016 reds that have been released thus far.Many of the top Bordeaux reds and Syrahs have not yet reached the international marketplace, and proof is not yet in the glass.However, there’s plenty to be excited about when it comes to Pinot Noir, from Martinborough and Central Otago in particular. You know it’s been an early vintage when the coolest subregion in Central Otago – Gibbston – is picked in April with all the leaves still on the vine. It was a warm and dry season, giving full-flavoured Pinot Noirs that are fully ripe, with elegant, mouthcoating tannins.

The Syrahs are fragrant, fleshy and fresh, with fine acidity.

15 New Zealand 2016 reds to try:

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New Zealand 2017: A vintage recap and whites to try

Mature New Zealand wines from the cellar

Rebecca Gibb MW takes a closer look at a challenging 2017 vintage in New Zealand and picks out 15 whites to try, from Sauvignon Blanc to Riesling and Chenin.

New Zealand 2017: A very difficult season with a cool start, poor summer and wet, warm and cloudy autumn bringing high botrytis pressure. Those who picked early were most successful. Central Otago escaped the worst of the unsettled weather, although it was a very small crop.

2/5

This is ‘Sauvignon Blanc with the volume turned down’

While New Zealand’s 2017 harvest was the third largest crop on record, it was much smaller than anticipated – blame the heavens, which dumped their watery loads at all the wrong times.Just as Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc was ripening on the vine, Debbie and Cook – two ex-tropical cyclones – descended on New Zealand on 4-5 and 12-13 April respectively, turning green grapes brown.

For varieties that had ripened before the April rains arrived, including Chardonnay, there were more reasons to be positive. However, during the critical ripening period, the country experienced low sunshine hours which, when combined with the wetter conditions, resulted in less flamboyant Sauvignon flavours, less concentration, modest alcohol levels and crisp acidity. In short, 2017 produced Sauvignon Blanc with the volume turned down.

Despite the iffy weather, there are still many attractive whites that will offer plenty of enjoyment from youth to the medium term. While some of the more commercial producers are already moving to the 2018 vintage, some of the most interesting barrel-fermented whites from 2017 are yet to emerge from the slumber of the cellar, and the full story of the vintage remains an open chapter.

A tale of two islands

On the North Island, particularly in the Auckland area, many battles with rain and rot were lost. Destiny Bay on Waiheke Island did not pick a single grape, and many flagship reds in the northern reaches of New Zealand became rosés.

At the southerly reaches of New Zealand, encirled by mountain peaks, Central Otago dodged the worst of the wet weather in late summer and autumn, but it was nevertheless a cool and windy growing season that led to small crops and a later harvest. The region’s Pinot Noirs are yet to be released, but both the Chardonnays and Rieslings are pristine and vibrant.

15 New Zealand 2017 whites to try:

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Mature New Zealand wines from the cellar

Premium New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc – panel tasting results

New Zealand isn't generally known for its mature wines at present, but there are some gems worth trying if you can find them. Rebecca Gibb MW picks out 15 examples for drinking now...

The success of New Zealand wine has relied heavily on one variety that’s best consumed young for its flamboyant fruit and youthful vigour.

Sauvignon Blanc has been both a blessing and a curse, placing New Zealand firmly on the world wine map but also strengthening the perception that New Zealand wines are not ageworthy.

This perception, however, is a misconception that needs to be detonated.

Scroll down to see the wines

It’s increasingly apparent that Sauvignon Blanc – which makes up 72% of the country’s wine production – does not need to be ‘picked, pressed and pissed before Christmas’, as some of the cruder winemakers used to joke. The finer examples of the varietal can be cellared for five years or more.New Zealand’s best reds – from Pinot Noir to Cabernet Sauvignon – also have the components to be able to age gracefully: concentration of fruit, natural acidity, ripeness of tannin and a splash of ‘je ne sais quoi’.

Recent tastings of older vintages have shown that many producers have underestimated the drinking windows of their wines and, in future, will have to rewrite their back-label blurbs with the advice: ‘will drink beautifully for a decade or more.’

The rapid evolution of New Zealand’s wine scene has made it difficult to confidently predict the longevity of its wines, as there aren’t decades of vintages to use as a yardstick. The majority of New Zealand’s vines were planted after 2000. As a result, many vineyards have only recently attained a level of maturity that is considered conducive to making fine, ageworthy wines.

The evolution of New Zealand’s vineyard area:

Year / Total plantings (ha)

2000 10,197

2005 21,002

2010 33,200

2017 37,129

Nigel Greening of Central Otago’s Felton Road, which was founded in 1992, explains: ‘While there will be a few examples of mature wines from mature vines, they will be rare. The point here is that the way mature wines show now will not be any indication of the future, or the norm for that future. ‘

In the past decade, while young vines have matured, viticulture has improved dramatically and winemakers have gained a better understanding of their sites, allowing them to refine their techniques.

While there are a small number of mature wines today that were produced from mature vines in the early noughties – notably from Martinborough and Hawke’s Bay – New Zealand continues to break new ground with every harvest.

Fifteen mature New Zealand wines for drinking now:

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The land of the long white cloud is an essential port of call for all Pinot lovers on their quest for the perfect glassful. Here, Anne Krebiehl MW selects 20 of her current favourites that combine the ethereal appeal of the great Burgundy grape with New Zealand's island individuality...

New Zealand gets under your skin. There is something about its remoteness, about its big skies, vivid with moving cloud by day and lit by countless southern stars at night.

Its landscapes are varied: from pastoral, grassy plains, craggy coastlines and magical beaches via temperate rainforests alive with the rattle of a thousand crickets to stark, sunbaked, snow-covered rocks, ravines and icy lakes. Wilderness runs right through it, thrilling all of the senses, making you feel intensely alive.

That Pinot Noir should feel so much at home on these two islands on the other side of the globe is our good fortune. Those of us who love this grape variety in all its infinite nuance can enjoy its expressions from a climate that unites cool briskness with bright, intense sunshine.

This sunny but cool brilliance makes it into those screwcapped bottles and explains their intensity of cranberry and cherry, redcurrant and mulberry.

We are spoilt for choice with New Zealand Pinot Noir at various price levels. Spend little more than £10 and you are guaranteed vibrant fruit and ample freshness, often on a lighter body that makes these Pinots so food-friendly. The pleasure-for-money ratio of these well-made wines is immense.

Here’s a tip: while they are made for immediate drinking, all apart from the very simplest will benefit from a little bottle age without losing any of their fruity intensity. Stocking up on some special offer bottles and storing them somewhere cool and dark for a year or two will create a little extra Pinot-ness.

Move up the price scale and you start to find wines with slightly more body and background, until you reach single vineyard wines from boutique producers that are undoubtedly world class. If you are playing, and perhaps collecting, at this level the prices are still civilised.

Screwcaps keep these wines in pristine condition for cellaring and fine, aged Kiwi Pinot Noir is a treat. Just like wine styles everywhere, the pendulum has swung towards elegance.

Regions

I look to Canterbury, Martinborough and Nelson for alluring savouriness, and to Central Otago for corralled power and beauty (even though there are still some hot and clumsy wines around).

Yet it is in Marlborough that the Pinot landscape has really shifted: it used to be about simple, confected fruit, but is now the source of very well made, high-volume wines, and the sights are set for increasing sophistication.

Purity

Small-parcel wines, sadly not over here yet, show what is possible. But no matter where you go, the focus at every level is on expressing purity, site and fruit. The Kiwis have made giant steps in a very short time, and now they are fine-tuning.

The very best of their wines capture the boundless, visceral beauty of these windswept islands right here in my glass – and under my skin.

Anne’s 20 top New Zealand Pinot Noir wines for your cellar:

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Burgundy 2001 versus 2000: Wines to drink

Amy Wislocki charts the rise of Cloudy Bay from plucky 1980s pioneer to one of New Zealand's best known wine producers, and reviews the latest releases.

Cult winery Cloudy Bay helped to drive New Zealand wine exports in the 1980s and 90s, but it really proved its mettle with the introduction of Te Koko, a pioneering oaked style of Sauvignon.

Scroll down for the tasting notes on Cloudy Bay’s latest releases

By New Zealand’s standards, cult Marlborough winery Cloudy Bay is part of the old guard, established in 1985 by David Hohnen, who was already famous for founding Cape Mentelle in Western Australia’s Margaret River.

Hohnen took out a high-interest bank loan to secure several key vineyard sites in the Marlborough region, and started to make a name for the winery with its Sauvignon Blanc.

Its brand recognition (is there a wine drinker anywhere who hasn’t heard of Cloudy Bay?) is largely explained by the fact that it was one of the first New Zealand wines to be exported, making a name for itself with its pronounced, fruit-forward character compared to the typically more restrained French Sauvignon Blancs that consumers were used to at the time.

The winery went on to pioneer a distinctive, more textured style of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc in 1996 – Te Koko.

Fermented by wild yeasts and aged in old French oak, early vintages were ‘all about malolactic fermentation, oak and ripeness,’ explains Tim Heath, senior winemaker at Cloudy Bay.

In 2010 a change of direction saw the oak influence being reined in, for the better.

Cloudy Bay’s founding winemaker Kevin Judd left in 2009 to establish a new winery, Greywacke – six years after Cloudy Bay was bought by luxury goods firm LVMH (Louis Vuitton Möet Hennessey).

Today the company also produces a Chardonnay, and two Pinot Noirs from two vineyard sites in Central Otago.

The company is cagey about Cloudy Bay’s production volumes, but states that its Sauvignon Blanc accounts for 65% of production; the Te Koko for 5%; then 10% each for sparkling wine Pelorus, the Chardonnay and Pinot Noirs.

Latest Cloudy Bay tasting notes:

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New pastures for New Zealand Sauvignon

New Zealand producer Brancott Estate has revealed the result of its design collaboration with New York-based Studio Dror.

New Zealand wine group Brancott Estate has unveiled a sculpture in its vineyards created by New York-based designer Dror Benshetrit.

Studio Dror’s eight-metre high sculpture lies in the middle of Sauvignon Blanc vineyards in Marlborough. The sculpture is called ‘Under/standing’.

It is made from 52 individual components that lock together once the matrix-like structure is erected into a standing position; intended to represent the complexity of winemaking and the ‘vineyard’s ongoing transformation’.

It is the latest of several collaborations between wineries and artists and designers.

New York-based Studio Dror is led by Tel Aviv-born designer Dror Benshetrit, who has previously been named in the ‘power 200’ of Wallpaper magazine.

He is known for his innovative work with structures; in particular, a structural joint system named QuaDror. He visited Brancott in 2014 to get inspiration for the project.

As part of the collaboration, Brancott’s chief winemaker, Patrick Materman, has created a limited edition wine range named Reflection and including a Sauvignon Blanc/Sauvignon Gris 2016 blend and a Pinot Noir 2015.

The wines will be available at the Brancott Estate Heritage Centre, via the Brancott Estate Wine Club (brancottestatewineclub.com) and in New Zealand Travel Retail for NZ$60 for the Sauvignon $80 for the Pinot Noir.

Brancott is owned by French drinks group Pernod Ricard and was one of the first to produce Sauvignon Blanc in New Zealand.

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