Wayne’s Wine World
Wayne de Nicolo returns to Blenheim in his native New Zealand to sample the local wines
Above: Richmond Ranges in Marlborough Country
As we ate lunch in straw sun hats borrowed from a pile sitting beside the terrace for the use of customers, I felt that this was as good as it gets in the quality of life department.
My only memory of Blenheim was going to an old cinema there as a child and feeling pleased with myself for not standing up when they played God Save the Queen at the start. Not so much nascent republicanism as not seeing any point in allegiance to someone so far away. I suspect that is how many Kiwis feel today. In those days the Wairau Valley was all farms and no vineyards. Now it is an almost unbroken carpet of them, and any remaining arable land coming onto the market is viewed as gold dust.
My hosts in Blenheim were a couple who own one of the vineyards which supplies the renowned Cloudy Bay winery with chardonnay and pinot noir grapes, David and Maree Leonard. David was at Blenheim Airport to meet me but was as unsure as I was, after 25 years, if we’d recognise each other. As I went to collect my luggage at the reclaim (the tarmac in the car park!) a taxi driver he knew said "that’ll be him", pointing to me. There must be something about returning Kiwis that gives them away.
An understated doctor with a dry sense of humour, David knows a thing or two about wine, which all made him an ideal guide. There was no time to take my baggage to the house. Within five minutes our two-day wine-tasting trail had begun as the first of 12 wineries we were to visit loomed into view. What follows are some possibly unreliable recollections of the journey.
Villa Maria and Wither Hills are adjacent to each other and, as luck would have it, the airport. They have justifiably established fine reputations internationally. VM had 47 wines on its list, about 10 available for tasting. Now David has a thing about pinot noir. Perhaps it’s because he grows it, perhaps it’s because he’s seen the film Sideways too many times. But at VM he set the pattern for the next two days by homing in on the pinots. One of theirs really impressed him.
In what was to become a familiar mantra, he asked questions about yields per hectare and which grape clones had been used (I do remember that Mendoza was a good yielder for chardonnay – or at least I think so).
The iconic Cloudy Bay was inevitably busy with tourists (sorry, wine enthusiasts). David received a warm and teasing welcome from the three women handling the tasting. Though the much-publicised Te Koko didn’t quite live up to its price tag, the standard of the wines was impeccable. This is no coincidence. Quality control is a high priority as I discovered when David took me around the production plant later.
Grapes from contracted growers which do not meet the required standards in a particular year are sold on for use under other labels. They keep tabs on the grapes throughout the growing season. That evening David received a call to say that the CB viticulturalist had just been to check the sugar levels in his pinot and they would harvest three days later. This was late February, about three weeks ahead of the usual pinot harvest time.
Sitting on the balcony of my friends’ house above a sea of vines, it was as if we were looking at its famous label in the distance. The dreamy, layered silhouette of the hills was painted from near the area the house stands in. Just after sunset the likeness is unnerving.
Next morning Te Whare Ra revealed another side to Marlborough winemaking. Founded in 1979, it is one of the oldest Marlborough wineries. Young owners Jason and Anna Flowerday make the wines themselves. Anna was formerly winemaker at highly rated Leasingham in the Clare Valley, Australia. A ring on the bell brought a helpful Jason to open the tasting hut, so the information on the wines came straight from the horse’s mouth. When we got to the 2005 Gewürztraminer, the best of a good small selection, David changed tack and asked about residual sugar. There was quite a bit of it in this rich, spicy and classy wine.
Spy Valley, which boasts a strikingly modernistic winery building, is named after the big white spherical satellite communication monitoring station further up the valley. Apparently it is the government’s sop to the Americans for not allowing their nuclear vessels into NZ waters. For me this was the best value range of wines we tasted. The quality is high across the board and the prices modest. This producer is going places.
As if to match the wine quality, the charming woman running the tasting room gave a polished performance. Somehow she managed to keep the wines flowing into the glasses of four or five groups of visitors, chat to them individually and then occasionally step back and impart some more information to everyone. And they all paid attention.!
The Tuscan style building at Highfield, complete with viewing tower, has a restaurant terrace overlooking its vineyards. The food, view and setting are the stuff of those alluring wine tour brochures. As we ate lunch in straw sun hats borrowed from a pile sitting beside the terrace for the use of customers, I felt that this was as good as it gets in the quality of life department. Clearly someone else thought so too. In a display of ostentation rarely seen in the Land of the Long White Cloud, he’d brought his friends for lunch in his helicopter.
An afternoon bike ride through the miles of vines and a final swift tasting brought an end to two magical days, and another of those little planes. In future opening a bottle of Marlborough wine will always evoke some special memories for me.
Wayne de Nicolo (rwd@nildram.co.uk)
Suppliers: Villa Maria and Wither Hills wines are widely available, as is Cloudy Bay if you are quick! Spy Valley: Bibendum Wines (www.bibendum-wine.co.uk). Te Whare Ra: supplied here if ordered on www.te-whare-ra.co.nz