New Zealand’s Latest Red Releases: Growing Up

BY REBECCA GIBB MW | MAY 14, 2024

New Zealand turned up late to the wine party. It was a millennium behind the Greeks and Italians. Even in the context of the New World, New Zealand gave Argentina and Chile a 250-odd-year head start. Despite being slow off the mark, it’s finally rallied, picking up the pace since the turn of the century and taking its place in the leading pack. Its current crop of winemakers is writing its own history for wine at the bottom of the earth.

The Akitu vineyard was planted in 2002 and is a short drive from Lake Wanaka in Central Otago. Its 2021 Pinot Noirs may be the best yet.

Wine grapes have been grown on and off in New Zealand since a Yorkshire-born clergyman arrived with vines in 1819. When Romeo Bragato, a Croatian-born, Conegliano-trained viticulturist, toured the country in 1895, he reported that grapes could be grown successfully from the warm climes of Hawke’s Bay down to the Alpine conditions of Central Otago. He concluded that Black Hermitage (Syrah), Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Dolcetto and Pinot Noir would thrive alongside whites, including Riesling, Pinot Blanc, Tokay and White Hermitage. He discovered Pinot Noir in the Wairarapa, which comprises Martinborough. The region has enjoyed a renaissance and now deserves its position as one of the most prized areas for the variety. French-born wine writer André Simon would later take the journey to the southern hemisphere, visiting Te Mata in Hawke’s Bay in 1964 and tasting its 1912 red blend. “Remarkable, quite remarkable,” he said. “One would not have thought it would have kept this long. This really is quite good.” During the visit, winemaker Tom McDonald had the audacity to put his 1949 Cabernet Sauvignon against 1949 Château Margaux. Simon declared that the Cabernet was "rare and convincing proof that New Zealand can bring forth table wines of a very high standard of quality.”

However, New Zealand grape growing and winemaking staggered its way into the second half of the 20th century. When Simon visited the country, it had a taste for sweet, fortified wines. It was hardly a wine-friendly environment: restaurants had only been given the green light to serve wine with a meal four years earlier, pubs still closed their doors at 6pm, and at every general election, voters didn’t just choose a party and politician; they had the opportunity to state whether they wanted the country to go dry, a legacy of a losing vote on Prohibition in the same year as the US vote in favor: 1919. The nation was asked their opinion on temperance when they went to the polls until 1987.

In this abstemious landscape, it’s a wonder any wine was made. Thankfully, pioneering individuals swam against the tide. In 1973, the first vines of the modern era were planted in Marlborough. Martinborough followed in the late 1970s and Central Otago in the 1980s. While New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc made a splash in the UK in the mid-1980s, there were still only 10,000 hectares of vines covering the country’s vast rural landscape at the millennium. In the past 24 years, however, plantings have quadrupled. The mass of planning in the early noughties meant the countryside was adorned with young vines, typically creating simpler reds for earlier drinking. However, there are now plenty of 20-something vines and more senior, earlier plantings that impress far beyond simply being varietal. Red Burgundy lovers would be wise to pay attention to its Pinot Noirs, while northern Rhône fans could find a few new wines to add to their collection from Hawke’s Bay.

The country’s greatest success story also proves to be its Achilles heel: New Zealand’s international wine reputation has thus far been based on a fresh, fruity, early-drinking variety: Sauvignon Blanc. Yet the treatment of this variety by large retailers as a fast-moving consumer good has had a negative impact on perceptions of the country’s reds: if its whites should be supped immediately, so too should its reds. There’s no denying that plenty of quaffing, drink-young Pinot Noir is produced and priced for supermarket shelves, but that’s true of any wine region. However, focusing on that tranche of the country would mean missing the real story.

When I refer to growing up, it’s not only the vines but the grape growing and the winemaking. Time has brought better knowledge of sites, the nuances of their vineyards, and how they should be treated best. Fine-tuning is taking place across the country: at a sub-regional level, the improvements in Marlborough Pinot Noir have been exponential with the maturation of vineyards in the richer loams of the hillsides of the Southern Valleys versus the initial plantings on the free-draining, valley floors which provide fruity wines with little structure and depth. When it comes to fine-tuning on a micro-level, Felton Road is an exemplar, introducing PCR DNA technology to measure spores in their vines to predict the likelihood of mildew before it happens rather than after, leading to proactive rather than reactive behavior in the vineyard.