Armed with our recommendations from Martin at Wai restaurant and a handful of phone numbers, we set out on Saturday morning to taste the best that Central Otago had to offer.

Here’s a little background on the region from Wikipedia:

At latitude 45º south, the Central Otago Wine Region is the most southerly wine producing region in the world. The vineyards are also the highest in New Zealand at 200 to 400 meters above sea level where they cling precariously to the steep slopes of lakesides and the edges of deep river gorges. Central Otago is a sheltered inland area with a continental microclimate characterised by hot, dry summers, short, cool autumns and crisp, cold winters.

Pinot noir is the leading grape variety in Central Otago, and is estimated to account for some 70% of plantings. The Pinot Noir variety is notoriously fickle and difficult to grow. Central Otago, however, with its combination of climate, terroir and determined winemaking appears to have the capacity to produce a world-class Pinot Noir that is increasingly sought-after. The grapes there are producing elegant wines with great aging potential that some experts believe will ultimately equal the best in the world.

We began our day at Peregrine Wines, which is the site of one of the most imposingly expensive looking tasting rooms we’ve yet seen. For some reason they built a huge metal and glass sail above the whole length of the tasting room and part of the winery. It’s inarguably cool looking, but the engineer in me couldn’t help it when the the tasting room host told us that it was intended to echo “the shape of a peregrine’s wing just as it takes flight”. My immediate response to him was, “Who told you that, an architect?”

“It was recognised early on that the building would be important in reinforcing the Peregrine wine brand,” says architect Christopher Kelly, “and the canopy roof may be interpreted on a number of levels: a transformation reflecting the process the grapes go through, as the roof rises from its low gradient at the river end to the 25 degree slope at the woolshed end. On a more literal level some see it becoming one of the uprising rock reefs, which mark the ancient geology of the valley.”

I have yet to figure out why architects feel compelled to imbue meaning into every structure they come up with. Is it a peregrine’s wing? Or the transformation of grapes? Or maybe rock reefs? It does my head in, I swear. I mean, Gustave Eiffel didn’t need to make up some nonsense about what a 1000 foot steel phallus was supposed to represent, and why not? Because Eiffel was an engineer, and probably never took the lessons in subjective nonsense they give art students and architects. Anyway, we liked Peregrine’s wine alright, but the whole place smelled of money (it’s owned by Sam Neill) which we are finding is often a bad sign when visiting a recently established winery. It means nobody’s had to work for anything. In a final bit of window dressing, we also found out that the barrels lining the below-ground tasting room were full of water, and therefore just for show.

I should have mentioned this earlier, but the Central Otago wine region encompasses several different sub-regions. Starting furthest west and heading east and south, they are: Gibbston Valley, Cromwell Bannockburn, Clyde, and Alexandria. We were hoping to meet with someone at Felton Road early in the day, so after Peregrine we headed directly into the heart of Bannockburn.

Bannockburn is a strange looking place for vineyards to exist. Gold sluicing in the late 1800’s washed away huge amounts of the surrounding hills and left behind man-made formations in landscape that look a lot like parts of New Mexico and Arizona.

Felton Road was closed, so our next stop was Olssens, followed soon after by Mt. Difficulty. We were impressed with both wineries, and the stars and exclamation points beside several of their wines in our notes reflect that.

We next tried to visit Bald Hills, which was one of Martin James’ major recommendations, but a sign by the gate said “Closed- Tastings By Appointment Only”, so we went down the street to Carrick Wines, tasted their wine, and then placed a call to Bald Hills. Martin had mentioned the name “Estelle”, so when an older female voice answered my call, I took a guess and asked, “Hello, is this Estelle?” When she confirmed that it was her, I introduced myself and explained briefly what it was we were up to. Estelle invited us to stop in, and five minutes later we were tasting Bald Hills’ wine in the kitchen in the welcoming home of Blair and Estelle Hunt. After some delicious wines and delightful conversation, I asked Estelle who their winemaker was, and she answered with a name that we’d already heard from Martin: Grant Taylor. We didn’t know it then, but the name and the man would soon become synonymous in our minds with Central Otago.

Martin had given us Grant’s name and number as someone we should definitely try to meet while in Otago, and based on our enjoyment of his work at Bald Hills, we had to agree. From the Hunt’s home we rang Grant and soon set an appointment with him the following afternoon. We thanked Estelle for accommodating us and then stopped by Akarua Winery, Rockburn Wines, and Aurum Wines, enjoying different wines at each place.

Outside Aurum Wine’s tasting room

Our last stop of the day was at Amisfield Wine Company, whose reassuring motto of “Grown Not Made” was reinforced by a large selection of interesting and tasty releases. Starting like we’d began the day, the engineer in me couldn’t help but notice the lovely old timber scissor trusses supporting the roof of the building. I can appreciate any structure for its aesthetic value, but I really love when they actually do something, too.

After a pleasant dinner involving steamed green-lipped mussels and Jaws 2, we headed to bed and fell asleep wondering, like the A. A. Milne poem, what will tomorrow bring?

***

Grant Taylor, Total Winemaker

On Sunday afternoon we headed back out of Queenstown to the Gibbston Valley Wines, which Grant suggested would be a good meeting place and also happens to be one of his former employers. Not a man to burn bridges, he maintains strong relationships with Gibbston Valley Wines and many others- at one time or another he’s made for most of the wineries in the area.

When Grant arrived we made our introductions and then hopped into his truck for a short ride over to his Gibbston Valley vineyard. His other vineyard is located in Bannockburn, and it is only the grapes from these two vineyards that he uses to produce his single vineyard Pinot Noirs under the Valli Vineyards label. I’ve heard that French do not have a separate word for Winemaker and Grape Grower- ideally, the two roles are indistinguishable. There are some winemakers who arrive in a winery just before harvest and make wine from the grapes they are given, and there are grape growers whose involvement with the end result ends as soon as the grapes are picked, but the total winemaker understands that great wine begins in the vineyard and ends in the glass, and by that definition Grant Taylor is among the first total winemakers that we’ve met so far.

I don’t think Grant would argue with my characterization. After all, it was his desire to produce single vineyard Pinot Noir showcasing the place where the grapes were grown (terroir alert!) that led him to leave behind jobs at larger wineries for a place where his control over the finished product is absolute.

Coincidentally, Grant happens to represent yet another of the Oregon-New Zealand connections we’ve found while here. He helped build and has handled several vintages at Archery Summit, a premier Pinot Noir producer located in the Dundee Hills of the Willamette Valley (what was that I said about money?), and knows Portland well.

We arrived at his vineyard and were given a short tour of the property before entering a well used (and historically protected) work shed on the property for a private tasting of Valli’s 2004 Bannockburn Vineyard Pinot Noir and 2005 Gibbston Valley Pinot Noir. Grant offhandedly mentioned that in 2005 he did not think his Waitaki grapes were good enough and decided to sell them to another winery rather than produce a vintage that year. The same was true of his Bannockburn grapes in 2004. The comment struck Brianne and I as a great testament to Grant’s ideas about quality- no one else we’ve met has every presented not producing a vintage one year as an option.

All things being equal, Valli’s 2005 Gibbston Valley Pinot Noir is easily in the top two Pinot Noirs that we’ve tried in New Zealand or anywhere else, and I can’t easily decide what the other one would be. Grant has big plans for Valli, and having met the man, I have little doubt that they’ll be realized. The $50 bottle of his wine we later saw in Christchurch was a challenge to leave at the wine shop, but budgets and backpacks limit how much wine we get to take with us to our next destination.

Inside Gibston Valley Wines’ Cave

After our tasting Grant drove us back to Gibbston Valley Wines where we joined a tour of their man-made cave, tasted lots of good wine and shared a delicious cheese tray including a delicious local sheep’s milk cheese called Hokonui. While standing in the tasting room a man approached us and said “Here are some familiar faces”. We didn’t recognize him, but he explained that he and his wife had seen us tasting wine at Mt. Difficulty the previous afternoon. “We noticed you writing notes in that little book of yours,” he said with a laugh, “and looking very serious”. It hadn’t occurred to us that keeping a record would make us stand out, but it’s true that we have yet to see anyone else writing notes at any tasting room we’ve visited. We explained a bit about our goals and gave the man one of ours, said goodbye, and headed for the last winery we’d visit in the area, Chard Farm.

Set back along a steep and narrow gravel road that used to be the wagon route to Queenstown, Chard Farm offered more of the high quality Pinot Noir that we’d quickly come to expect from the Central Otago. Central Otago’s combination of dramatic setting and consistently high quality ended up winning my vote for favorite wine region in New Zealand. The self-confidence exhibited by wine producers in the region is a result of good wine rather than good marketing, and there seems to be an understanding that Central Otago’s geographically limited room for growth will require a quality over quantity approach in the future.

Chard Farm

It was late afternoon when we drove back to Queenstown and returned our rental car, and then spent the rest of the day walking around the waterfront. During our time in Queenstown we’d gotten in contact with Kim Rayner at Torlesse Wines in Waipara, and were planning to come and work for him later in the week. But before that we’d first head for Milford Sound, next to Dunedin and finally to Kaikoura, a sleepy beach town situated on the east coast of the south island. After that a few days of work in Waipara would be followed by a few days of rest in Christchurch, and then we’d leave New Zealand altogether and fly to Australia. For people without a home or jobs, we always seem to have an awful lot to do.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 5:55 am and is filed under Cellars, Destinations, New Zealand, People, Posts by C.J, Vineyards, Wine, Wineries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.