New Zealand’s next step: Saddled with the popularity of Sauvignon Blanc, winemakers yearn for a challenge

August 25, 2011
New Zealand’s next step: Saddled with the popularity of Sauvignon Blanc, winemakers yearn for a challenge
Blenheim, New Zealand — Anyone can identify the vines near the small town of Blenheim, New Zealand: This is Marlborough, famous among wine lovers for its zingy Sauvignon Blanc, and that grape hangs from nearly every vine. Fly into the area on the hopper flight from Wellington, and you see the tall Sauvignon Blanc vines shooting to the sky like whisk brooms pushed into the ground handle-first. Drive along the quiet country roads that ring most of the area’s wineries, and you’ll see vines closing in all sides. You can’t escape the grape; neither can the local wineries.
American wine drinkers fell hard for Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc in 1985, when Cloudy Bay first began exporting its wine. The lively, grassy, minerally wine, a perfect pairing for raw oysters and Pacific Rim cuisine, sprinted to cult status. The intense aromas and crisp acidity provided a predictable, easy-to-like flavor profile, and the production methods made it easy for industrial wineries to cash in. Suddenly, Marlborough was wine country. The few patches of grapevines, first brought to the area in 1973 by Montana Wines, exploded into a shag carpet of vineyards, pushing out the garlic that had been the region’s hallmark crop. And the world wanted more.
“We see demand constantly increase; it hasn’t slowed down,” says Chuck Hayward, wine buyer at San Francisco’s the Jug Shop, one of the country’s best sources for New Zealand wine. Growers know it, too.
“There’s a lot of laziness there; if growers plant Sauvignon Blanc, they know it will sell,” Hayward says. Though wine enthusiasts may have moved on to newer darlings such as Austrian Gruner Veltliner and Basque Txakoli, demand for Marlborough’s primary export remains strong among average drinkers.
Though New Zealand only accounts for 15 percent of U.S. sales of Sauvignon Blanc by volume, according to Nielsen Company data, its sales continue to expand, growing nearly 29 percent in the past year.
“Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t order Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc, and interest and demand has remained consistent,” says Ken Wagstaff, wine buyer and sommelier at San Francisco’s Aqua restaurant.
This despite the fact that he doesn’t push it as a food wine: Its intense flavor overwhelms subtle dishes. And the style’s popularity has inspired competition from other New World wine regions ready to snatch Marlborough’s crown the moment that drinkers turn away.
Clive Dougall, the winemaker for Seresin Estate in Marlborough, sums up the dilemma: “It seems to me that the insatiable demand for Sauvignon Blanc has discouraged winemakers from trying to make a better Sauvignon with more complexity.” Marlborough is, perhaps, a victim of its own success.
Wine without complexity
Marlborough’s winemakers will often tell you off the record that they find “Sauvy” boring. Some are more direct about the industrial version: “I don’t personally care for it,” says Mike Weersing, owner of Pyramid Valley Vineyards, which makes Marlborough Pinot Blanc, Riesling, Semillon, and Pinot Noir, but no Sauvignon Blanc. He says the emphasis on intense aromatics, from variety to winemaking, creates a wine that gives plenty of aroma but no complexity. “It’s a parody of a real wine,” he notes via e-mail.
That’s why “boring” is a common descriptor for industrial Sauvignon Blanc: Growers push yields high, machines harvest the grapes efficiently and hydraulics tilt the grapes into the controlled guts of a stainless steel tank. Ferment the juice, check it occasionally, and you end up with the wine that everyone wants to buy. Winemakers don’t need to check clusters, manage barrels or handle the grapes delicately.
“In order to make a very aromatic, intense, commercial-style Sauvignon Blanc, machine harvesting is advantageous,” says Dougall via e-mail, whose Seresin Estate winery practices biodynamic farming and handpicks its grapes. Machine harvesting works “because some of those aromatics are released by an enzymatic reaction between the crushed berries and juice.” The grapes get squished, sloshing the skins and juice together.
And it costs less. Clive Jones, the winemaker for Nautilus Estate, says, “Handpicking is at least four times the cost of machine picking.” Barrels, he argues, double the cost of tank-based winemaking.
Jones sees the bright side of this simple winemaking. “I think Marlborough Sauvignon is exciting, seeing those vibrant flavors quickly transformed from grape to glass,” he says.
“Yes, it is relatively simple to make in the winery but the key is the picking decision … Winemakers spend more time walking up and down rows tasting grapes than hovering over pumps in the winery. Machine harvesting … allows us to react quickly and harvest larger quantities of grapes at the optimum time.” Besides, he says, “A focus on single or limited varieties works very well for Champagne and Burgundy so why not Marlborough?”
Source: http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-04-11/wine/17143467_1_cloudy-bay-sauvignon-blanc-new-zealand-s-next-step-wine-enthusiasts