New Zealand wine
New Zealand wine is produced in several of its distinct winegrowing regions. As an island country in the South Pacific Ocean, New Zealand has a largely maritime climate, although its elongated geography produces considerable regional variation from north to south. Like many other New World wines, New Zealand wine is usually produced and labelled as single varietal wines, or if blended, winemakers list the varietal components on the label. New Zealand is best known for its Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, and more recently its dense, concentrated Pinot Noir from Marlborough, Martinborough and Central Otago.
While New Zealand wine traces its history to the early 19th century, the modern wine industry in New Zealand began in the mid-20th century and expanded rapidly in the early 21st century, growing by 17% a year from 2000 to 2020. In 2020, New Zealand produced from of vineyard area, of which ha is dedicated to Sauvignon Blanc. Nearly 90% of total production is exported, chiefly to the United States, Britain and Australia, reaching a record in export revenue in 2020.
History
and viticulture date back to New Zealand's colonial era. New Zealand's first vineyard was planted in 1819 by missionary Samuel Marsden in Kerikeri. James Busby, New Zealand's governing British Resident in the 1830s, planted vineyards on his land near Waitangi, having earlier established what is now the Hunter Valley wine region during his time in Australia. He was producing wine for locally stationed British soldiers in 1836. In 1851, French Marist missionaries established a vineyard in Hawke's Bay for making Communion wine. Now part of the Mission Estate Winery, it is the oldest commercial vineyard in New Zealand. Portrait artist William Beetham planted Pinot Noir and Hermitage grapes at his Lansdowne, Masterton vineyard in 1881. In 1895, the New Zealand government's Department of Agriculture invited the expert consultant viticulturist and oenologist Romeo Bragato to investigate winemaking possibilities. After tasting Beetham's Hermitage, he concluded that New Zealand and the Wairarapa in particular were "pre-eminently suited to viticulture." His French wife, Marie Zelie Hermance Frere Beetham, supported Beetham in his endeavours. Their partnership and innovation to pursue winemaking helped form the basis of modern New Zealand's viticulture practices. In 1896, Joseph Soler, a Tarragonan winemaker settling in Whanganui, published a Māori language pamphlet entitled Kupu tohutohu mo te mahi whakato tapahanga waina karepe for educating local Māori on viticulture.Dalmatian immigrants arriving in New Zealand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought with them viticultural knowledge and planted vineyards in West and North Auckland. Typically, their vineyards produced table wine and fortified wine to suit the palates of their communities. For the first half of the 20th century, winemaking in New Zealand was a marginal economic activity. Land use during this period was primarily animal agriculture, and the exports of dairy, meat, and wool dominated the economy. Most New Zealanders were of British descent, and favoured beer and spirits; the temperance movement further reduced the national appreciation for wine. The Great Depression of the 1930s also hampered the growth of the fledgling industry.
By the 1970s, some of these inhibiting factors underwent important changes. In 1973, Britain entered the European Economic Community which required ending the favourable trade terms for New Zealand's meat and dairy exports. This led ultimately to a dramatic restructuring of the agricultural economy, and diversification away from traditional "primary" products—dairy, meat and wool—to products with potentially higher economic returns. Vines, which produce best in low moisture and low soil fertility environments, were seen as suitable for areas that had previously been marginal pasture.
The end of the 1960s saw the end of the New Zealand policy known as the "six o'clock swill", where pubs and bars were open for only an hour after the working day ended, and closed all day Sunday. The same legislative reform saw the introduction of BYO licences for restaurants, which had a marked effect on New Zealanders' appreciation and consumption of wine.
Finally, the advent of jet airliners in the late 1960s and early 1970s ushered in the OE, where young, typically well-educated New Zealanders spent time living and working overseas, often in Europe. The ensuing exposure to wine while abroad subsequently stimulated demand within New Zealand.
Emergence of modern industry
In 1973, Montana Wines, now Brancott Estate owned by Pernod Ricard, planted Marlborough's first vineyards and produced its first Sauvignon Blanc in 1979, labelled by year of production and grape variety, in the style of wine producers in Australia. That year, superior quality wines of Müller-Thurgau, Riesling and Pinotage were also produced. Good Cabernet Sauvignon wine from Auckland and Hawke's Bay bolstered the industry with ever-increasing investment, vineyard plantings, rising land prices and greater local interest and pride. The result of this boom was over-planting, particularly in hybrids and less well regarded but high yield varietals such as Müller-Thurgau. Hoping to address this issue, a 1984 government initiative paid growers to pull up vines, but many growers used the grants to swap these varieties with more fashionable ones, particularly Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, often keeping the old rootstock. This, combined with the introduction throughout the 1980s of much improved canopy management techniques to reduce leaf vigour and improve grape quality, set the New Zealand wine industry on course for recovery and greatly improved quality.Sauvignon Blanc breakthrough
By the 1980s, wineries in New Zealand, especially in the Marlborough region, were producing outstanding Sauvignon Blanc. It was in 1985 that the Sauvignon Blanc from Cloudy Bay Vineyards finally garnered international attention and critical acclaim for New Zealand wine. Wine writer George Taber recounts Cloudy Bay is "what many people consider to be the world's best Sauvignon Blanc". New Zealand's reputation is now well established; Oz Clarke wrote New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc was "arguably the best in the world", and Mark Oldman wrote "New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is like a child who inherits the best of both parents—exotic aromas found in ... the New World and the pungency and limy acidity of an Old World Sauvignon Blanc like Sancerre."Climate and soil
Wine regions are located mostly in free draining alluvial valleys—Hawke's Bay, Martinborough, Nelson, the Wairau and Awatere valleys of Marlborough, and Canterbury—with the notable exceptions of Waiheke Island, Kawarau Gorge in Central Otago. The alluvial deposits are typically the local sandstone called greywacke, which makes up much of the mountainous spine of New Zealand.Sometimes the alluvial nature of the soil is important, as in Hawke's Bay where the deposits known as the Gimblett Gravels represent such quality characteristics that they are often mentioned on the wine label. The Gimblett Gravels is a former riverbed with very stony soils. The effect of the stones is to lower fertility, lower the water table, and act as a heat store that tempers the cool sea breezes that Hawke's Bay experiences. This creates a significantly warmer mesoclimate.
Waipara, in Canterbury, represents another soil type. The Omihi Hills, part of the Torlesse group of limestone deposits, are located here. Viticulturists have planted Pinot Noir here because of the French experience of the affinity between the grape type and the chalky soil on the Côte-d'Or. Even the greywacke alluvial soils in the Waipara valley floor have a higher calcium carbonate concentration than the Côte-d'Or, indicated by the milky water that flows in the Waipara River.
The Kawarau valley has a thin and patchy topsoil over a bedrock that is schist. Early growers blasted holes into the bare rock of north-facing slopes with miners' caps to provide planting holes for the vines. These conditions necessitate irrigation and make the vines work hard for nutrients. Irrigation, low cropping techniques, and the thermal effect of the rock produces great intensity for the grapes and subsequent wine.
The wine regions in New Zealand stretch from latitudes 36°S in the north , to 45°S in the south. New Zealand's climate is maritime, meaning that the sea moderates the weather, producing cooler summers and milder winters than would be expected at similar latitudes in Europe and North America. Maritime climates tend to demonstrate higher variability with cold snaps possible at any time of the year and warm periods even in the depth of winter. The climate is typically wetter, but wine regions have developed in rain shadows and in the east, on the opposite coast from the prevailing moisture-laden wind. The wine regions of New Zealand tend to experience cool nights even in the hottest of summers. The effect of consistently cool nights is to produce fruit, which is nearly always high in acidity.
Industry structure and production methods
New Zealand's winemakers employ a variety of production techniques. The traditional concept of a vineyard, where grapes are grown on the land surrounding a central simply owned or family-owned estate with its own discrete viticultural and winemaking equipment and storage, is only one model. While the European cooperative model is uncommon, contract growing of fruit for winemakers has been a feature of the New Zealand industry since the start of the winemaking boom in the 1970s. Indeed, many well-known producers began as contract growers.Many fledgling producers started out using contract fruit while waiting for their own vines to mature enough to produce production-quality fruit. Some producers use contract fruit to supplement the range of varieties they market, even using fruit from other geographical regions. For example, it is common to see an Auckland producer market a "Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc" or a Marlborough producer market a "Gisborne Chardonnay". Contract growing is an example of the use of indigenous agro-industrial methods that predate the New Zealand wine industry.
Another example of the adaptation of NZ methods toward the new industry was the universal use of stainless steel in winemaking adapted from the norms and standards of the New Zealand dairy industry. There was an existing small-scale industrial infrastructure ready for winemakers to employ economically. While current winemaking technology is almost universally sterile and hygienic worldwide, the natural antibiotic properties of alcohol production were more heavily relied upon in the 1970s when the New Zealand wine industry started.
This pervasive use of stainless steel had a distinctive effect on both New Zealand wine styles and the domestic palate. The early wines, which made a stir internationally, were lauded for the intensity and purity of the fruit in the wine. Indeed, the strength of flavour in the wine accommodated very dry styles, despite intense acidity. While stainless steel did not produce the intensity of fruit, it allowed for its exploitation. Even today, New Zealand white wines tend toward the drier end of the spectrum.