All Change: New Zealand Reds 

BY REBECCA GIBB MW | APRIL 27, 2023

After shutting its doors in March 2020, New Zealand fully opened borders to international visitors in August 2022. Despite a global pandemic raging around them, the country’s winemakers have enjoyed a string of good vintages: 2019, 2020 and 2021. There have been many changes since the government closed its doors. It had been three years since I stepped foot in Aotearoa, a country I called home for six years and which will forever be a part of me. Admittedly, there are a lot of familiar faces sporting a few more grey hairs and wrinkles, myself included. The stalwarts of the industry and the names we have come to consider New Zealand’s finest remain. They continue to refine and redefine their wines, whether it’s Ata Rangi, Felton Road or Kumeu River. However, it is inescapable that this industry is transitioning from its first generation of wine producers to the next.

Dawn breaks over Lake Wanaka and Rippon's vineyards, one of Central Otago's pioneers.

International influences have been a part of the New Zealand wine scene from its early days. Dalmatians were the driving force behind the wine scene in the late 19th century. The modern era of New Zealand wine has been shaped by a united nation of small wine producers who have emigrated from their homeland, whether Austria, Australia, America or Asia, to grow grapes at the bottom of the earth. Its isolation has always attracted the super-rich, with billionaires buying a piece of New Zealand with the expectation that they can get on a private jet to escape when Armageddon hits. What started as a gentle trickle to own a New Zealand vineyard has become a steady stream in recent years with prestigious, large-scale overseas investment: Australia’s Torbreck has purchased Martinborough’s Escarpment Vineyard; San Diego businessman Brian Sheth has taken on Pyramid Valley in North Canterbury as well as Lowburn Ferry in Central Otago; Edmond de Rothschild bought Akarua in Central Otago; LVMH expanded their operation from Cloudy Bay in Marlborough to Central Otago; even James Suckling has purchased a property in Martinborough which long supplied the single vineyard fruit for Kiwa to Escarpment. The list goes on.

Things are changing within New Zealand’s borders, too. The long-standing wine team at Dry River, including winemaker Wilco Lam with the backing of a German investor, failed to take ownership of the place he called work and home. It was sold to Luna (the neighboring estate), owned by the Chinese-born, Wellington-based businessman Charlie Zheng. The Dry River team has since acquired the nearby vineyard On Giants’ Shoulders and will rebrand and build on the blocks a young couple put in place. There have also been high-profile personnel changes, including ex-Vidal winemaker Hugh Crichton who is now heading up the cellar at Elephant Hill. At the same time, Richelle Tyney left Spy Valley to join Kevin Judd at Greywacke.

There’s also natural generational change. The early 1980s marked a new, modern period for the New Zealand wine scene. Many of those who spent 40 years and more making it what it is now, including Villa Maria’s George Fistonich, Escarpment’s Larry McKenna, Trinity Hill’s John Hancock, Dog Point (formerly Cloudy Bay’s) James Healy, Neudorf’s Tim and Judy Finn to name but a few, are hanging up their winemaking boots or handing over the reins to the next generation. The children of the Baby Boomer generation are taking over from their parents, learning the reins as much as they teach their parents new tricks. But they are in the minority: just 25% of businesses make it to the second generation, according to the Family Business Institute. The question of succession will only continue to grow as the New Zealand community expands: there were just 131 wine companies in 1990. Today, there are 744 wineries.

There is a group of new brands made by younger producers whose parents have had no association with wine other than drinking brands like Chasseur from a boxed, three-liter bag in the 1980s and early 1990s. Among them are many experimental winemakers pushing the boundaries of New Zealand wine. The youth’s courage has imbued many with a desire to explore the question: will the country’s past and present wine scene be its future? As a result, there is a cohort of brilliant and motivated alternative winemakers across the country turning away from the pristine, conventional winemaking of their predecessors, trialing extended skin contact, pied de cuve ferments, blending varieties that you wouldn’t traditionally consider as partners and holding back on most cellar interventions. The results are wildly variable, from good to undrinkable. Wine aims to provide sensory pleasure, and when presented with a cloudy, tannic white or a sour red, it fails in its primary objective. I can’t help but feel it’s all a case of Emperor’s New Clothes, and many of us are frightened to say so. In stating this, I may be accused of being closed-minded, but I am not. I am seeking out these wines at every opportunity in a bid to have my mind changed. However, this is an industry in flux. The growing diversity of both the community and its wines is a natural exploratory step if it is to mature and thrive.