Rockburn Tigermoth Riesling 2011 Central Otago

Riesling has benefited as much as any wine from the maturing of New Zealand’s vineyards. Older vines give wine substance and depth. Riesling has traditionally been given a degree of sweetness to temper its acid, which can dominate the delicate purity of a variety that is a little like the ripeness of crisp Granny Smith apple in its best expression. German Riesling has traditionally been sweetened to temper high acid levels in the wine of a short, cool growing area. As New Zealand vines mature our Riesling is better able to cope with less residual sweetness. The wine of older vines ripens more completely and is fuller bodied than the wine of young vines.

This Rockburn Riesling is bright, lively pale gold in colour. It has a lingering aftertaste with something of the flavour of ripe Granny Smith apples as well as a twist of rock melon and the tang of ripe grapefruit.  

It is a beautifully balanced wine which was enjoyed at Didas on Jervois Road, while a man on a guitar played flamenco.

Tim Harris - Winewriter

Trinity Hill Chardonnay 2011

                                          ABSOLUTELY CHARDONNAY

Joanna Lumley, as Patsy Stone, in the TV show Absolutely Fabulous tottered about on high heels with her hair falling out, a glass of wine in one hand and waving a lipstick stained fag in the other, while saying things like “you can never have too many handbags or shoes” to express the philosophical element in her role as a fashion editor.

The same can be said about Chardonnay within reason, as in you can never have too much of it. It is not obvious wine and it has the capacity to age more reliably than the aromatic wines such as Sauvignon Blanc. Chardonnay is frequently maligned because of popular prejudice or ignorance. It can be dead dull, and even the better wines can be insufficiently obvious to appeal to people unused to the comparatively passive nature of this non aromatic grape variety. The good ones are subtly appealing, like the scented richness of a bowl full of ripe peaches.

Chardonnay has an enigmatic element. Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc, both aromatic wines, can be described in terms of other fruit they resemble. Sauvignon Blanc is said to resemble gooseberries, or with bottle age as having the tang of stone fruit such as nectarines. Riesling has its own clear as a bell aroma of lemons and limes, and can develop a tang of honey from residual sweetness as the wine ages. The appeal of Chardonnay is in its capacity to develop with bottle age to reveal elements not visible in the young wine and as the vineyards age this complexity will become more pronounced.

Trinity Hill Chardonnay 2011 from Hawkes Bay, made by John Hancock is a good one. It is brilliant pale straw in colour and positively glows in the glass. It is beautifully balanced as to weight and length of palate and has something of the concentration and complexity of crystalline fruit, set against an aftertaste of bright, fresh, balanced acidity.

Tim Harris

 October 2012

And here for something completely different are some shots I took at the Martinborough Airshow of a Sopwith Camel.   

 

Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc Southern Clays Marlborough 2011

              Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc Southern Clays Marlborough 2011

This is bright pale straw wine with an intense bouquet, delicately balanced in the classic style of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, and enriched by the character of clay. It is ripe, tight, and pervasive, with savoury fruitiness and great intensity and is beautifully made and seamlessly blended.   Deep gravel gives the wine from the vines grown on it bright aromatic intensity and definition. This is the “cats pee on a gooseberry bush” description which has been coined for the Marlborough style of Sauvignon Blanc.  Clay soils make more rounded and more immediately appealing wines, in this case with a trace of the herbal scent of sage.   

                                                          Magnolia blooms in Spring

John Forrest Collection 2007 Syrah

                      

                          Tim Harris Winewriter 

                      

                      JOHN FORREST COLLECTION 2007 SYRAH   

This is youthful red wine from the Gimblett Gravels of Hawkes Bay that is probably close to its best time for drinking. It has had about 4 years or a bit less from bottling, and is developing well. It needs to breathe after being opened. It is quite delicate and at first does not show much of itself. It can help in such cases if you take a glass out of the bottle to make space for the rest of the wine to passively breathe for a while before you pour it.

On no account decant delicate wine. It gets a shock it can’t recover from and deprives you of the opportunity to manage the process. This 2007 wine has the bottle age to reveal itself when carefully handled. It has a bright pink meniscus, is bright scarlet in the glass and is quite densely coloured. The  palate is supple and well balanced for breadth and weight against an aftertaste in which fine friable tannin is set against refreshing tartness.

WINEMAKERS RE-UNION DINNER IN HENDERSON

REUNION DINNER AT THE FALLS HOTEL IN HENDERSON

When people from Croatia and the Lebanon came to New Zealand they brought with them from Europe the culture of wine. It was part of their identity. In an earlier enforced migration, for people torn from the vastness of Africa and taken as slaves to America, their most enduring possessions were the chants and tales of their folklore, which evolved as the music of Dixie; the Blues, Gospel, and later on Rock and Roll. Music soothed their loss. These thoughts came to mind as I listened to Soul music, while driving out to Henderson in late July  2010 to celebrate the refurbishment and reopening of the Falls Hotel.  I was invited by Garry Bates, the manager, and by the Winemakers of West Auckland, whose wines were served at the banquet.

The Falls Hotel is a Heritage building dating back to 1854. It was named after a spectacular water fall at Waitakere, which became a trickle when its river was dammed for the Waitakere Reservoir to be built. Early black and white photographs on the walls of the pub evoke the flickering images of silent Wild West movies; as in femmes fatales with bustles, boas, and cleavages; poker players - drone males with eye shades and braces; and cowboys with Colt 45s. The restoration of the old hotel preserves the feel of the 1880s, in stud heights, proportions, colours and finishes. You can imagine cussing fighting cowhands being thrown out onto a clay road, under the restless hooves of tethered horses. The Falls Hotel, it should be said, is as much modern sophistication as Wild West. The food served at the dinner was in the style of nouvelle cuisine, in small portions of carefully matched and mixed textures and tastes. For me the best of them was rare cooked Cervena. It was tender, juicy and slightly spiced.

 At the Falls Hotel I found faces I had not seen for 20 years or more, faces altered by the passage of time to add creases to features and grey to hair, something you don’t necessarily think about, even if you own a face and use a mirror to shave. There were speeches. Brian Corban, grandson of Assid Abraham Corban, founder of the Corban family wine company at Henderson, talked about the history of Corban’s Wines, a history with much in common for all the first wine making families in New Zealand, whether from the Lebanon or from Croatia. They fled here as families from the turmoil of the Balkans in the death throes of the Ottoman Empire. They packed what they could carry into suitcases and walked to the nearest seaport, to catch a ship to the other side of the world. In New Zealand the Croatians laboured in the gum fields of the North. People from Lebanon became small traders.

 The Corban family name is still a major brand in New Zealand wine. In 1979, a century after the earliest pioneers of the family arrived in New Zealand, the Corban family sold a majority stake in Corban’s Wines, to Rothmans. This led ultimately to DB becoming the owner of the Corban brand. The wine interests of the Corban family are now in Hawkes Bay, where Alwyn Corban, a cousin of Brian, is the winemaker for the family wine company Ngatarawa Wines, making wine from its vineyards on the Heretaunga Plains.

                                Tim Harris - Winewriter - and his Sunday morning addiction

Church Road McDonald Series Hawkes Bay Chardonnay 2011

                        CHURCH ROAD  MCDONALD SERIES CHARDONNAY HAWKES BAY 2011

First impressions are important in tasting wine. The initial sniff and spit, crude though it may seem when set out in print, is a vital window of recognition. The other important first impression is colour.  Chardonnay should be pale golden or bright straw coloured. The aroma of the wine should be fresh and appealing. Off odours such as sourness and the smells caused by an unstable fermentation are signs of an unsound wine that will not keep well. A huge part of learning how to make wine is devoted to recognizing the off odours of instability. The other side of the coin is the pure joy of tasting a fine, fresh young wine. This Hawkes Bay Chardonnay is such a wine.

Hawkes Bay Chardonnay is always worth looking at. Obviously some are better than others. The best can be sublime. This wine is tautly structured. It has good tone, and the acid that gives it backbone is friable, meaning it does not assail the senses but insinuates itself as part of a complex citrusy flavour that registers on the palate as a creamy sensation, which fills the back of the mouth and is tart as well as unctuous, lingering on after the wine has been swallowed.

Wine Note by Tim Harris

Telephone 021 477 171

11/145 Howe Street

Freemans Bay

Auckland 1011

9 August 2012

                               Sopwith Camel - Martinborough Air Show - 'One of my favourites' 

Hunters Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2011

                                    MARLBOROUGH SAUVIGNON BLANC

“Cats pee on a gooseberry bush” was the epithet given to Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc by British wine writers when the wine appeared on sale in London in the early 1980s. The first Sauvignon wines from Marlborough were pale in colour and had an intense raw aroma. They were certainly distinctive, and occupied a space in the world of food and wine among the stronger characters in the field of acquired tastes.

That Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc should have become so widely planted and so prominent was due to a considerable extent on an act of faith by Montana Wines, who saw the promise of Marlborough and devoted a significant area of the vast vineyards they were planting there to Sauvignon Blanc.

In the establishment of markets the late Ernie Hunter of Hunter’s Wines, who died suddenly before his time in the early 1980s , was a most effective salesman promoting Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, particularly in the UK where he helped create the export potential of the wine there. He was an ebullient Irishman who always had a bottle of his wine with him and who never missed an opportunity to promote it. He courted the press and the wine trade effectively.

The current vintage of Hunters Sauvignon Blanc  2011  tastes of ripe nectarines, is defined by a fine thread of acidity, is deliciously mouth filling, and has a lingering aftertaste. It is a most enjoyable wine.

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