New Zealand: Sauvignon Blanc, New Zealand

The land of the long white cloud - and home to more four-legged woolly inhabitants than humans - burst onto the global wine scene a decade ago with critically acclaimed Sauvignon Blanc. Graham Howe visited New Zealand's famous Marlborough region earlier this year and reports on his experience."We're sitting in the vineyards where everything started in the early 1970s. Ten years ago, it was all about Sauvignon Blanc. Now the new buzzword in Marlborough is Pinot Noir." Mike Just, the acclaimed winemaker at Lawson's Dry Hills, gestured expansively, encircled by a sea of vines in the Marl-borough region on the south island. Almost perfectly on cue, a bakkie from Koura Bay with the license plate 'P Noir' pulled up behind the marquee.

 

Whatever variety the future holds, the annual Marlborough Wine Festival remains a showcase for Sauvignon Blanc. Thousands of wine-lovers come from all over the world to taste the great white wine in situ in the vineyards grown at a deep southerly latitude of 41oS - exactly where the first hectares of Sauvignon Blanc were commercially planted three decades ago and today the source of Montana's acclaimed Brancott Estate Sauvignon Blanc.

Life imitates art in a landscape recognisable by familiar wine icons. Flanked to the north by the Richmond ranges, and to the south by Wither Hills, the picturesque Marlbor-ough winelands are set against the misty mountain silhouettes depicted on the Cloudy Bay label. The Wairau Valley wine trail takes you through immaculate vines planted in sedi- mentary gravel and silt soils along a fertile flood plain that stretches to the sea. It begins and ends in Blenheim, the agricultural hub of the south island, a quaint market town intersected by vineyards, olive groves and boutique cellars.

All of the stars in New Zealand's galaxy of Sauvignon Blanc attend the Marlborough Wine Festival in early February. This year, Villa Maria, producer of the champion Sauvignon Blanc at the 2002 International Wine Challenge in London, showed the Private Bin SB 2000 that scooped the prestigious trophy. Mud House, winner of the champion Sauvignon Blanc trophy at the 2001 International Wine and Spirit Competition in London, showed its winning 2001 vintage. All of the top producers of Marlborough Sauvignon were there, notably, Hunters, Isabel, Nautilus, Palliser, Saint Clair, Vavasour and Wither Hills.

Spearheaded by bigger producers such as Cloudy Bay, Montana and Villa Maria, 65 new wineries have emerged out of the Sauvignon Blanc rennaissance in the cool maritime vineyards of Marlborough. By the mid '80s, the region had rocketed into prominence worldwide as the home of New Zealand's Sauvignon Blanc - a variety that now accounts for 23% of the national vineyard and 50,8% of total wine exports. Marlborough is the largest producer (80%) of the island's Sauvignon Blanc, with extensive plantings of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and a little Pinot Gris, Riesling, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, too.

At the Marlborough Festival, the winemakers talk affectionately about "Sav" or "Savvie" - Kiwi shorthand for the grape that made New Zealand wine famous. They're so devoted to the noble white grape that viticulturalists strip the stems of leaves, leaving each bunch naked on manicured vines to ensure maximum exposure to sunlight, a scarce commodity this far south. They harvest each vineyard over a long period, picking at intervals in order to develop a full range of flavours.

Marcus Wright, the assistant winemaker at Lawson's Dry Hills (one of three local producers of Sauvignon listed among the American Wine Spectator's Top 100 Wines in 2001), says: "Without Sauvignon Blanc New Zealand would still be years behind. It snowballed, putting New Zealand on the map. Wine styles and consumer demand changed overnight. We're not looking for the steely, flinty style of the Loire." The unique climate - warm days, cool nights - produces wines with big acids that jump out of the glass. Ran-ging from the herbaceous to the riper end, Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc stretches across a zesty aroma and flavour spectrum of freshly cut grass, nettle and green pea, asparagus, figs, gooseberry and grapefruit to riper granadilla, melon, lime and litchi. "The trick is getting a bigger mouth-feel on the palate," says Wright.

And gastronomic tourism has grown along with the Marl- borough wine trail. Almost every cellar in the region known as 'the food province' has its own restaurant, and finding a culinary match for Sauvignon Blanc is one of the highlights of the Marlborough Wine Festival. Chefs from all over the country showcase local ingredients such as crayfish, green-shell mussels (another renowned export), paua (abalone), salmon, scallops and organic market produce in a competition to create a regional signature dish. Peter Chaplin impressed the crowds this year with his dish - mussel and kumara (a local yam) dolmades wrapped in Sauvignon Blanc vine leaves. "Mussels have umami - the fifth flavour - and a molecule they share with Sauvignon," commented Bill Floyd, chairman of the judging panel.

New Zealand has come a long way since Marlborough's Matua Valley released the first single varietal Sauvignon Blanc in 1974. Spearheaded by the cult wine from Cloudy Bay, the distinct style is a national icon that has captured the wine world's imagination from London to New York. (If some marketing genius ever comes up with a similar way to sell Brand South Africa to the world, they would be celebrated like Halley's comet in the Cape wine firmament.)
According to Kevin Judd, chief winemaker at Cloudy Bay: "The challenge faced by New Zealand's winemakers is to keep those herbaceous characters in check. I am sure this fresh edge and intense varietal aroma are the reason for its international popularity. The better wines have herbaceous characters in balance with the more tropical characters associated with riper fruit."

Oenologist Eveline Fraser says that staying ahead of the game has been the subject of great debate at Cloudy Bay, astutely marketed by Veuve Clicquot. And what comes after Sauvignon? More Sauvignon! Te Koko (meaning Cloudy Bay in Maori), a new super-premium brand, was released with great fanfare in the United Kingdom and Australasian markets in 2002. The oak-aged white wine marketed as 'a rich, alternative style of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc' could be the ingenious sequel to the great Kiwi success story.

"If ever there was a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc made for Chardonnay lovers, this is it," agrees wine writer Michael Cooper, awarding the barrel-aged Sauvignon made in an altogether different style 5 Stars in his 2002 guide to New Zealand wines. Dry, complex and wooded in character instead of herbaceous in style, the barrel-aged Te Koko is made in the lusher Hawke's Bay style of Sauvignon Blanc - with a creamy lees texture and deep tropical flavours of apricot, guava and litchi.

Almost two decades after Cloudy Bay trail-blazed Brand New Zealand with a quintessential new-world Sauvignon Blanc, Kiwi wine producers are casting around for the elusive sequel. That said, is it time for Marlborough to step aside?

Warmer wine regions on the north island would like to put a signature red wine on the global map. The jury is still out on whether it should be a single variety or a blend, outspoken or elegant and mineral-driven in the Old World style of the wines from the acclaimed Gimblett gravels terroir of Hawke's Bay.

Some look to Pinot Noir, the most commonly planted red variety in New Zealand. In Martinborough, Marlborough and Canterbury, home of the country's best Pinot Noirs, winemakers are putting their efforts into making a New World Burgundy. Others look to the big red blends coming out of Hawke's Bay. Marcus Wright of Lawson's Dry Hills is not sure: "Cabernet Sauvignon used to be the variety. It's all Pinot now. Stylistically, we're still trying to work out what to do with it, though."

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