A vine romance with chardonnay(2)
"In the first instance in New Zealand and Australia, people were making the wine in stainless-steel first, doing the fermentation, then ageing the wine in barrels. That's the worst thing you can do, because you over-extract the oak, tend to oxidise the wine," he says.
"It's only been since we started to ferment in barrels that you started to get more subtle characters from the oak and then use a bit of subtlety in the percentages of new oak."
The other development in chardonnay in the 1980s was the use of malolactic fermentation, basically a bacterial fermentation which converts the apple-like acidity to a milk-like acidity – the buttery note in chardonnay.
"When it was first introduced in New Zealand chardonnay, it was looked down on as a bit of a fault," Brajkovich says.
"Our first commercial chardonnay, in 1985, which had the malo character ... judges thought it was oxidised.
"We were using the [method] not to introduce butteriness, but to reduce the acid biologically rather than chemically."
A trend was born, but sometimes to the detriment of the variety. "In many cases in warmer climates, the malo was not required, because the acids were low enough already," he says.
"Again, like a lot of these things, if a little bit of butter is good, then a whole lot of it must be great, so you ended up with these parody chardonnays. The trend now has been to more elegance, more true to type fruit characters.
"The wines are refreshing again, rather than tiring."
John Belsham, founder and winemaker at Foxes Island Wines in Marlborough, is a small producer but has a flagship chardonnay, which was its major wine in the 90s and early 2000s.
"We're now finding that interest in chardonnay is increasing for us as well," he says.
Foxes Island sells to high-end restaurants and independent retail. "What we're finding, particularly in the Auckland marketplace with restaurants is that sales of chardonnay are increasing, riesling is stable and sauvignon is stable at best," says Belsham, who was an Air NZ Wine Awards judge for 20 years, five as chairman of judges. "The bad chardonnay makers that were cashing in moved away from it because they were losing market share, so the producers that have always produced it and who have just got better are still there."
That trend to producing quality chardonnay was evident in the accolades Kiwi and Australian winemakers were getting, but also in the respect they got from restaurants across Australasia, Belsham says.
"They are much more structured, textural, elegant wines that have complexities that are not just oak driven. And they're damned good wines, often pretty competitively priced, so its not surprising that these are being discovered, in some cases rediscovered, by consumers."
NZW chief executive Philip Gregan isn't so sure, yet, of a huge swing back to chardonnay.
But he agrees the chardonnays being produced here have improved. "More sophisticated, elegant and stylish."
NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK
The question is whether chardonnay will ever overtake sauvignon blanc with wine drinkers or be something new that knocks it off its perch.
Villa Maria is one winery that thinks it's important for the industry to continue to focus on new varieties, not an easy task given the long cycles required for research, planting and growing.
National wineries manager Fabian Yukich says when Sir George Fistonich founded the vineyard in 1961, he insisted on his managers and winemakers thinking long term.
"If you didn't try other varieties, we wouldn't have New Zealand sauvignon blancs. You've got to do this work and see what grows in these conditions," he says.
Villa Maria senior Auckland winemaker Nick Picone says several new varieties are faring well at the cellar door, including the relatively rare grape arneis, which comes from northern Italy.
There is also verdelho for a dry white, used for fortified wine in Portugal, which is grown by only a handful of New Zealand vineyards. It has three viogniers, from the entry-level private bin to the luscious single vineyard Omahu Gravels, situated next to Gimblett Gravels in Hawke's Bay.
It is also producing a grenache, the main grape used in the famous Cotes du Rhone wine – and appellation – Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
Jane Skilton recently wrote in the Sunday Star-Times of the little known vermentino produced by Northland's Doubtless Bay Wine Company. Skilton said a panel of wine experts were asked to nominate grape varieties that could become popular in the next 20 years – one English wine merchant chose vermentino.
Even Ross Spence has been quoted saying it was probably unfortunate that sauvignon blanc turned out to be so successful in New Zealand, because there had been a reluctance to seek new varieties that would provide an equally exciting future.
We'll drink to that.
BY THE NUMBERS
Wine industry data (2010) shows there are:
1128 growers in New Zealand, with 672 wineries producing on 33,428 hectares. About 266,000 tonnes were crushed.
Sauvignon blanc is New Zealand's major variety, accounting for 44.3 per cent of total producing vineyard area, ahead of chardonnay at 11.3 per cent, pinot gris at 4.3 per cent, riesling at 2.7 per cent and gewurztraminer at 0.9 per cent.
Marlborough is the country's major vineyard area at 57.7 per cent, with Hawke's Bay next at 14.8 per cent, Gisborne at 6.2 per cent, Canterbury-Waipara at 5.3 per cent, and Otago at 4.6 per cent.
Sales by volume in 2010-11 reached 221 million litres, up 11 per cent the previous year. Exports grew to $1.1 billion, making it the ninth ranked export product.
A VINE RHYME
A verse by the late Christopher Stevens, a Master of Wine, friend and mentor of Michael Brajkovich, of Kumeu River Wines, and big promoter of French wines in New Zealand and the wines of New Zealand to the rest of the world. Note: An ampelographer is an expert at identifying grape varieties.
Ampelographers in their wisdom say
the grape that's great is Chardonnay.
Vignerons, on the other hand
Have been rather slow to understand
That what will make the people pay
A little bit more
Is Chardonnay.
– Kit Stevens (1941-2004)
