Seeking a calling card for our wine

Nelson is staking a claim as the home of New Zealand's finest aromatic wines. Alastair Paulin explains.

Today, as 150 delegates at the Nelson Aromatics Symposium 2010 wash down their riesling-poached market fish with some of the 19 local wines selected to accompany Kevin Hopgood's lunch, they will be doing some hard work.

Pleasurable work, no doubt, and maybe even luxurious, but the group of international wine writers, winemakers and wine buffs gathered at the Moutere Hills Community Centre are part of an effort to make waves for Nelson wine.

That is no easy task, says Mike Brown, chairman of WineArt – the marketing body for Nelson's wine growers and until recently, the winemaker at Richmond's Waimea Estates.

Nelson makes terrific wine but faces two key impediments to being recognised as one of New Zealand's premier wine regions.

The first is its comparatively small size. Nelson had 794 hectares of vineyards in 2008, out of a national total of 29,310ha. Compared to Marlborough's 15,915ha, or even Otago's 1522ha, Nelson does not a significant market presence.

The second is that Nelson, like Marlborough, grows most varieties equally well. But consumers want a distinctive story with their wine and Mr Brown jokes that the catchphrase "it's all good" is no more compelling for wine buyers than it is for Richmond.

Nelson's wine industry needed a calling card, and so around five years ago WineArt began marketing Nelson as the home of New Zealand's finest aromatic wines.

Aromatic is a somewhat vague term in wine-speak; it can mean the chemical substances that give wine its aroma or bouquet, but is generally understood to describe varieties of white wine that are defined by their intensely floral or fruity smell.

Sauvignon blanc is the best known of these in New Zealand, but because of its overwhelming footprint on New Zealand's wine industry, "savvy" tends to be regarded as its own brand.

For Nelson winegrowers, aromatics means the other temperate-climate, highly scented white wines such as riesling, pinot gris and gewurztraminer.

That marketing effort resulted in the inaugural Nelson Aromatics Symposium in 2007, which drew 160 delegates, many of whom were in New Zealand for Wellington's Pinot Noir 2007 event.

Tim Finn, who as the owner of Upper Moutere's Neudorf Vineyards is perhaps the region's best-known wine figure, said that following the 2007 symposium, he "certainly noticed a greater awareness of Nelson as a winemaking region". The decision to claim the aromatics title was a strategic one, said Mr Brown: "Sauvignon blanc has been thoroughly co-opted by Marlborough, pinot by Central Otago and chardonnay by some of the North Island regions." Essentially, the aromatics were "up for grabs".

Nelson's aromatic varieties are also the wines that tend to feature most strongly in competitions, he says, and another reason is that "so much of the region's cuisine features seafood", which pairs well with aromatic wines.

Nelson's winemakers had to find a niche that they could hang their hats on to attract people and make a statement, says Andrew Greenhough, from Hope's Greenhough Vineyard, who is leading the symposium's tasting panel of dry riesling. Identifying with the aromatics was "an opening that Nelson could legitimately fulfil".

The symposium is "incredibly important", he says. "It's an opportunity for the region to attract some really important media and international winemakers" who will take the story of Nelson aromatics to wherever they come from.

Mr Greenhough says although the important thing is that the visitors see that Nelson "does produce some brilliant aromatic varieties", they'll see other wines as well.

The symposium's biggest drawcard among winemakers is Ernst Loosen, from Germany's Dr Loosen estate, a riesling powerhouse that has been in his family for more than 200 years. Mr Greenhough says it was a "great coup" to get him here while Mr Finn, the chairman of the symposium, says in terms of riesling, "he's the man".

His presence is expected to shine some light on Nelson's rieslings, a variety that has always been more embraced by winemakers and wine buffs than the general quaffing public.

Riesling is "slightly unpredictable in the marketplace because it's hard to know if you're buying a wine that is dry, medium or sweet", says Mr Greenhough. That "uncertainly factor", from the punters' point of view, as well as a perception that sweet wines are somehow not serious wines, has contributed to riesling being an also-ran in the New Zealand wine industry, despite the country having an ideal temperate climate for growing it.

Only 3 per cent of New Zealand vineyards are planted in riesling, compared to 47 per cent for sauvignon blanc and 15 per cent for pinot noir. Locally, 18.5 per cent of vineyards are planted in aromatics, compared to 39 per cent in sauvignon blanc, 23 per cent in pinot noir and 15 per cent in chardonnay. But riesling fans, like Mr Greenhough, sing the praises of the purity of the variety. As a winemaker, "there aren't a whole lot of games you can play".

The variety inspires others, such as Cuisine magazine wine writer John Saker, who wrote a personal appreciation of riesling for the symposium handbook.

A more pragmatic reason to focus on riesling is that after many years of wine buffs declaring – more in hope than with any evidence to back it up – that the riesling renaissance was upon us, it is now the variety with the fastest growing sales in the United States. Mr Finn says this is partly because consumers are looking to wines with lower alcohol content.

Daniel Schwarzenbach, the owner and winemaker of Tasman's Blackenbrook Vineyard, is chairing the symposium's tasting panel of gewurtztraminer, an honour he says he is "quite chuffed about" given how many excellent gewurtztraminers are made in Nelson.

He is a fan of the aromatics, saying his favourite to grow and work with is pinot gris, followed closely by gewurztraminer and then riesling.

But he prefers to call them the Alsatian varieties, as their traditional home has been in Alsace.

"I'm passionate about Alsace and the Alsatian people," says the man who worked with Olivier Humbrecht – owner and winemaker of Domaine Zind-Humbrecht, regarded by many as the best winery in Alsace.

Mr Schwarzenbach speaks of how versatile gewurztraminer is, matching well with Asian flavours, or, as is done in Alsace, drunk cold with sauerkraut or spicy sausage.

As he sips his 2008 Nelson gewurztraminer at his gravity-fed winery on Baldwin Rd, he says he loves the "spicy, gingery, rose petal, lychee" flavours of the wine.

Mr Greenhough says the symposium panel's tasting of European wines alongside the Kiwi varieties will be a "benchmark to compare and contrast our wines to".

- © Fairfax NZ News