|
|
|
 |
|
 |
 |
  Quaffers® Feature - April 2002
Essential features for wine-lovers...
|
QUICK TIP: Do you need instant wine credibility?
If you are short of time, the key concepts in our features are highlighted for you by coloured words. Come back to the feature at your leisure to fill in the details!
Don't forget to check our Glossary for any unfamiliar wine-related terms - if it's not there, why not Ask the Expert? |
|
| Stuff of legends: Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc |
|
Special thanks this month to Patrick Materman, winemaker at Montana Wines Marlborough, for supplementary information.
 There can’t be many wine-drinkers worldwide who have never heard of the phenomenon of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, specifically from the Marlborough region. Among those, there can’t be many who are not familiar with the words "Cloudy Bay". The legend of Kiwi Sauvignon has been established for just shy of twenty years, but such is its strength that the wines have gained international pre-eminence. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Marlborough’s winemakers should be proud of themselves: even some French producers are seeking to emulate the style of their Southern Hemisphere counterparts.
So what exactly is the fuss all about? Surely a grape is a grape, and the wine you can make from it is much of a muchness. Serious wine-makers the world over raise their eyes to the heavens at this notion, for where does it recognise the influence of terroir, that is the unique attributes of the vine in relation to local geography, geology and climate? This month Quaffers® goes to Marlborough to find out what makes Sauvignon Blanc tick in Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud.
From zero to hero
Prior to the mid-1980s, New Zealand wines were struggling to make inroads on the world's palate. A few visionary winemakers had raised the game in different regions by experimenting successfully with noble varieties, but the country's lingering reputation for producing underwhelming wines was a hard one to overcome. The arrival of Cloudy Bay's ground-breaking Sauvignon Blanc on the international scene in 1985 changed the market's perception of what was possible. Here was a classic grape, with an established reputation for elegant austerity, bone dry style, crisp acidity and zesty green fruit (led principally by the French with its Loire Valley gems at Sancerre and surrounding appellations). Yet what had happened to this old familiar, for such luminaries as Hugh Johnson to describe the Kiwi interloper as "thrilling", and Oz Clarke to comment in a Radio NZ interview that the grape revealed "a flavour which no-one's ever found before… unbelievably strong, unbelievably memorable"?
It was still full of racy acidity, still typically green, but also packed full of ripe fruit and tropical aromas which had never been realised before. Since then, aromatic pungency has become the hallmark of the region, and some commentators will even go so far as to propose that Marlborough's finest Sauvignon Blancs are arguably the greatest examples of this varietal produced anywhere in the world - ever.
A river runs through it
 The Wairau River Valley, home to the majority of Marlborough vineyards, runs West to East between the northern Richmond mountain range (up to 3000m above sea-level, snow-capped in winter) and the Wither Hills to the south. On the north-eastern side of the South Island, the Wairau flows into Cloudy Bay, so named by Captain Cook because of the muddying effect of river-borne silt in the water. Beyond that is the Pacific Ocean and thousands of miles to the South American Coast.
Vineyards are mainly concentrated around the small town of Renwick, inland from Blenheim, but are also gradually appearing in the neighbouring Awatere Valley. A broad plain is dominated by the braided riverbed, which has thrown up varied soil patterns due to silt and gravel deposits brought down from the mountains. The northern (Rapaura) side of the valley has alluvial soils laid down by river floods in relatively recent geological times. It is wines from here that tend to show more intense ripe fruit, which for Sauvignon Blanc brings passionfruit and tropical flavours. On some patches of land, the stones under the vines are large enough to heat up during the day and release warmth overnight, in much the same way as happens in the Mosel in Germany.
On the southern side of the valley the soil is older, the remnants of ancient glaciers.
 This land has a higher clay content than Rapaura. Wines from this area usually show more aromatic restraint and have greater palate weight. Some have mineral notes as well as the expected Marlborough fruit indicators, and they are likely to cellar better too. Most of the Wairau Valley soil is free-draining and ideal for grape cultivation. On the other hand, it can be so fertile that the vines become excessively leafy. Careful canopy management is therefore vital for the grapes to receive maximum exposure to sunlight.
Fortunately Marlborough is blessed with high average sunshine hours which are not compromised by excessive heat. This brings with it a long and usually reliable ripening season, which is not always a luxury afforded to growers in other international Sauvignon Blanc strongholds. As a result, the fruit carries forward excellent sugar levels, without losing too much of the acidity which has made its name. What might be lost in the just-ripe "greenness" which has been the traditional style of the grape, is more than made up for by the impressive range of tropical flavours which develop to complement typically acid zest. Passionfruit, mango, and pineapple all show up alongside capsicum (green pepper) and even asparagus to accompany herbaceousness, gooseberry and nettles; "Cat's Pee on a Gooseberry Bush" has become a name to conjure with, but Jancis Robinson refers more demurely to "tomcat" (and then only in reference to a few examples!).
Putting the savvy into Sauvignon Blanc
The Kiwi vernacular pronounces the grape "Sav Blonk" for short, and "Savvy" for even shorter. Some may find this disrespectful to a variety with such an illustrious heritage. However, New Zealand's spectacular success with it would indicate differently, and there has been no shortage of vinous know-how applied to the challenge of producing world-class wines. Indeed grape cultivation in Marlborough is not a modern phenomenon; there were vines from at least 1875, but somewhat inevitably, given the country's economic history, sheep were the principal local money-spinner. With the mountainous South Island already on the margins of accepted wisdom about the latitudes for viticultural viability, it was not easy to convince anyone of the long-term prospects of changing from agriculture to horticulture.
Then New Zealand's biggest player, Montana Wines, took a chance on Marlborough. The first plantings of Sauvignon Blanc appeared in 1973, but even by 1985 when Cloudy Bay filtered onto the international market, only the top three Kiwi corporates (Montana with Corban's and Villa Maria) and three independents were in the game. Gradually many of those who grew grapes for others took advantage of vinification and bottling facilities offered by the Vintech operation to make small quantities of their own wines, without the financial gamble involved with setting up in-house. The hands-on culture of taking the grapes from the vine right through to final release was established, and when Vintech was bought out by four producers in 1995, many of the smaller growers had garnered enough confidence to invest in their own wineries.
 Less than twenty years later, Sauvignon Blanc is the main variety in the region, and the region is the most-planted in the country. The industry here has expanded rapidly to the point that plantings have more or less tripled since 1982, and by 1999 there were fifty-six individual producers in the region. The proliferation of going concerns in the Wairau Valley has also brought with it experimentation and diversity in the grape varieties grown, as well as high-profile wine tourism. Not only can visitors taste abundantly at the cellar-door in Marlborough, but they can also enjoy some superb Kiwi cuisine and hospitality. Such is the value of this market to producers, that the Wine Marlborough festival on the second Saturday of February has become a hugely popular annual event for producers and punters alike.
In Marlborough the 2002 harvest is in. It has been a tricky wet summer, but the final six weeks before bringing the first fruit to the winery (mid-March) brought some much-needed sunshine and warmth to the vineyards. Crop levels look promising on balanced vines, and the prognosis is favourable for another good year. Whatever the outcome of the new harvest, it is certain that the wealth of knowledge which has built up around Sauvignon Blanc in Marlborough has opened the door to a successful future. If the same skill and mastery of the region's conditions can be applied to other likely varieties such as Riesling and Pinot Noir, both of which prefer cooler climates but can also benefit from steady sunshine, who knows what unexpected aromas and qualities could emerge from these favourites? Time will tell, but if Marlborough's rapid progress to date is anything to go by, the wine world won't have too long to wait. |
|
|
| Coming up next month: Sicilian wines have made a splash mid-Mediterranean for thousands of years. Find out more about their ancient and modern impact in May! |
|
 Return to Features main page
|
|
 |
|
