VARIETALS
Chardonnay (NZ's 'third' varietal after Sauvignon Blanc & Pinot Noir) is Gisborne's predominant grape, followed by Gewürtztraminer
- plantings of Viognier, Semillon, Pinot Gris & Chenin Blanc followed Müller-Thurgau's demise. Recent reds to emerge include Merlot, Malbec & Pinotage, though the overall percentage of red plantings, compared to white, is not as high as in the Hawke's Bay.
TERROIR
NZ's most easterly wine region lies in a fertile river valley. Average temperatures range from the mid-30's over summer to 9°C in winter, with annual rainfall averaging 900mm, though compared to Marlborough Gisborne has less sunshine
hours & more rain. Most plantings are on flat, alluvial plains, where the soil is a mixture of silt & clay loams. The main sub-regions are Ormond, Central Valley & Patutahi. (overview)
HISTORY
Friedrich Wohnseidler released his first wine in 1921 & by the late '60's Wohnseidler was producing 2 million litres annually, with the area gaining a reputation for bulk. Corbans & Montana bought Gisborne grapes during the '60's, opening wineries there in the '70's. Based on Müller-Thurgau, these large plantings lead to a wine glut & a government vine-pull scheme in 1985. During the mid-1980's larger producers amalgamated as smaller boutique vineyards emerged.
ABC's of Chardonnay
'Anything But Chardonnay': A fashionable New World trend towards "ultra-oaky buttery brutes" in the 1990's created a backlash from which Chardonnay has taken some time to recover. Excess oak
camouflaged fruit flavours, allowing some winemakers to use inferior grapes in large quantity, further damaging Chardonnay's reputation.
Regional Variation: Warmer regions produce full-to-medium bodied Chardonnay with ripe fruit flavours, whilst cooler regions tend towards medium-to-light showing more minerality & citrus, with acidity increasing further south. Style is equally determined, though, by the individual winemaker using techniques such as malolactic fermentation & oak aging.
Paul Atwood (ICC judge): "Chardonnay is a blank canvas onto which winemakers stamp their own personality. Most winemakers have large egos, hence big, super-oaky wines! But the change in style has been quite remarkable in the last few years - we're starting to see wines now that are showing more elegance"
Shunned white wine makes its comeback
NEIL HODGSON 22/06/2012
A little over a decade ago you, the consumer, decided you had had your fill of Chardonnay &, just like the traitorous cat that turns on you once you have fed it, you shunned your previous favourite tipple in favour of the newcomer, Pinot Gris.
That may be just a little harsh but I am sure there are plenty of Chardonnay producers who will agree with me. Maybe you had overdone a good thing & simply wanted to try a wine that offered different flavours, & Pinot Gris offered that difference.
In the meantime those of you who did shun Chardonnay have missed a huge transformation in Chardonnay production; years ago big, fat, muscular - almost brutish - wines that tasted like they had a couple of planks of oak in each glass were the fashion but in recent years the predominant winemaking style has evolved to a point where many modern Chardonnays are incredibly well-balanced, elegant wines & at last you, the consumer, seem to have remembered why you liked it so much in the 1990s.
For me Chardonnay is a great expression of the skill of the winemaker as well as the quality of the fruit & the vineyard location. The winemaker has to make a huge number of right decisions to make sure he (or she) adds just the right amount of what I call "winemaker influence" to the wine; when to stop fermentation, how long to ferment all or part of the fruit in oak barrels, how much if any of the juice will go through a secondary malolactic fermentation & many other small but significant decisions.
Chardonnay sales are on the increase & right now is the perfect time to poke your nose into the Chardonnay shelf. Because producers had so much trouble selling it, many of the current releases are a few years old & make fantastic drinking. On top of this you can also buy some of these older vintages at very good prices.
And we simply can't write about Chardonnay without including Neudorf Vineyards. Both their Neudorf Nelson Chardonnay & Neudorf Moutere Chardonnay are considered among the very best in NZ, with the Moutere version rated as one of the best in the world.
