New Zealand

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AUCKLAND WAS NOT actually closed when I first went there in 1985, as well-travelled friends had joked it would be. But New Zealand’s biggest city was not exactly vibrantly open either. I had flown in from Sydney, and the contrast could not have been sharper. Where the Australian city already had a bustling cosmopolitan restaurant scene, Auckland was still majoring heavily on a dish known locally as fush and chups. The two countries’ wine industries were also in very different phases of evolution.

New Zealand was way behind - though the wines being produced were not bad, provided you liked semi-sweet southern hemisphere versions of Liebfraumilch. However, there were exceptions. I had been impressed by Montana’s sauvignon blanc and Te Mata’s Coleraine cabernet sauvignon and that made me think something interesting might be happening. All it took then to visit New Zealand’s most interesting wine areas was five days.

Now you could spend that long visiting just one. There are around 500 wineries across the country and a new operation opens every couple of days. But there’s another reason why it takes longer. Today it’s a rare producer who doesn’t offer plenty of good reasons to spend a couple of hours under his roof and among his vines.

Temptations range from four-wheel-drive trips around the vineyards and hands-on lessons in vine pruning to cookery courses and world-class restaurants and hotels. I’ve often returned to New Zealand, focusing more recently on research for my new book, The Wine Travel Guide To The World.

There are 500 wineries across the country

The first wine region I ever visited was close to the now-vibrant harbour city of Auckland. This is where Edinburgh-born James Busby planted grapes and made a wine that, in 1840, struck a French explorer called Dumont d’Urville as ‘light’ and delicious to taste’. Busby’s efforts were followed early last century by immigrants from Dalmatia, in what is now Croatia, who had come here to tap gum. When these men began to make wine for themselves, it did not pass unnoticed.

The government’s Aliens Commission commented in 1916: ‘A great deal of feeling against these men… is due to many of them being winegrowers and the belief that Maori women are able to get, through them, intoxicating liquors. Where young and vigorous men, attractive young women and intoxicating liquors are found together, debauchery will very certainly result.’

When they weren’t debauching the local womenfolk, the Dalmatians and their descendants were quietly laying the foundations of the modern New Zealand wine industry. This is obvious in the prevalence of winery names like Babich, Nobilo, Selaks and Delegats.

But another couple of Dalmatians actually helped to change the way the rest of us drink: Ivan Yukich, who founded Montana, the winery that launched the international taste for New Zealand sauvignon, and George Fistonich, whose Villa Maria brand was the first major wine company to switch over from corks to screwcaps.

There are none greater than Stonyridge

The new Villa Maria winery just outside Auckland is set in a vast park dotted with olive trees transplanted from their previous home 100 miles away. The wood, glass and concrete building has catwalks that allow visitors to wander past the battalions of gleaming stainless steel tanks and presses, and the long rows of new oak barrels used to age the chardonnays and the reds (sauvignon blanc rarely goes into a barrel).

Needless to say, there’s also a shop and cafe and an outdoor arena where, if you time it right, you might be able to catch a concert. If all this high-techery is not your scene, you’ll feel more at home at nearby Kumeu River where Michael Brajkovich produces less wine than you could fit into a couple of the Villa Maria tanks.

The single-story winery on the outskirts of the city might easily be a modern suburban house. But the winemaking here is as traditional as in any of the medieval cellars in Burgundy, whose wines have been beaten in blind tastings by Kumeu River’s chardonnay.

The example of these two pioneers has been followed by almost all their countrymen and you no longer need a corkscrew to open 85 per cent of New Zealand’s wines.

Auckland has another must-visit wine region that is accessible only by boat. Waiheke Island is a short ferry ride from the city.

There are great vineyards here, and none greater than Stonyridge, created by former professional yachtsman Stephen White. If you only had time to visit one winery in New Zealand, this would have to be it - you can chill out in the wooden cafe overlooking the rows of neatly trimmed vines while enjoying Pacific - meets - Mediterranean food and a glass of White’s larose, a better-than- Bordeaux red.

People have been known to enjoy themselves so much, especially on the evenings when the live music starts after dusk, that they have missed the last ferry home.

From Auckland you could head south to Gisborne, which is the first city on earth to see the sun rise. Gisborne’s other claim to fame is as the source of large quantities of good chardonnay. It’s also home to the winery that produces Lindauer, New Zealand’s best-selling sparkling wine.

One of the local heroes is a man called James Millton who seems like a level-headed farmer but needs little prompting to tell you how his method of winemaking involves burying small amounts of cow dung in a cow horn, before digging it up on a day the planets are in the appropriate alignment, diluting it with spring water and special plants, stirring it alternately clockwise and anticlockwise to ‘energise’ it before spraying it on the vines.

It’s easy to laugh at these methods until you taste Millton’s chenin blanc and chardonnay, and discover that this so-called biodynamic process has been adopted by some great winemakers across the globe.

Follow the east coast to the hilly region of Hawke’s Bay and you get to the home of most of New Zealand’s best examples of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and syrah and some of the most impressive new wineries. My favourite is Craggy Range, a palatial effort built by wealthy American Terry Peabody, who ploughed millions’ into a winery and restaurant called Terroir. Our next stop is Marlborough on South Island.

Human skills count for a lot more

If Marlborough is best known for its sauvignon blanc, the region also produces great examples of other grapes. One place to test these is the Framingham winery, where you can explore rieslings, lychee-ish gewurztraminers, peary pinot gris and a montepulciano that adds New Zealand freshness to the herby character of this Italian grape. The final stop was the even more beautiful region of Central Otago, near Queenstown, where vines are grown at 1,500ft altitudes close to New Zealand’s best ski slopes. Central Otago pinot noir is on the lists of top wine merchants across the globe.

A key player is Sam Neill, New Zealand born star of The Piano, who launched a wine called Two Paddocks in 1997. Like fellow thespian Gerard Depardieu, Neill takes his vineyard very seriously but sensibly leaves the winemaking to someone with greater experience.

The operation looks like a warehouse on an industrial estate. But the dozen or so wines made here for wineries too small to have their own facilities prove that good grapes and human skills count for a lot more than pretty buildings.