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New Zealand wine of the week - www.wineoftheweek.com
edited by Sue Courtney
Wine of the Week newsletter No. 45 - February 2007
5 February 2007
Dear Friends of www.wineoftheweek.com,
In this issue: -2007 - the start of another great year Wine Festivals coming up International Media here in force My new Blog Recent Wines of the Week A Toast to the Father of New Zealand Wine2007 - another year, and it shaping up to be a good one for wine growers, despite the colder than normal summer. This is because the grapes got an early start in the spring and if the start of summer had also been hot, like the start of last summer, then it would definitely be another early harvest, like in 2006.
I spoke to Marlborough winemaker Brian Bicknell (Mahi Estate and now the new owner of Cellier Le Brun) in the middle of January and he said he thought that harvest time in Marlborough would be about 'normal'. In fact, if the weather warms up, as it traditionally tends to do in February, the Marlborough harvest could even be a little bit early again. Sauvignon blanc may be slightly down in yield, but chardonnay and pinot noir finished flowering before the cold snap. So look for nets going onto vines near you sometime very soon.
As for the weather, I was listening to weather guru Bob McDavitt on the radio in the car on Friday. He was predicting an Indian summer, saying that we are nearing the end of the El Nino phase and that the anticyclones will linger. It's going to be a hotter than normal late summer and early autumn, although he wasn't confident about the warm weather lasting right through April.
Well some warm weather will be good news for growers in Central Otago because they desperately need it, according to an article in The Press last week. In the Gibbston Valley subregion, they experienced the coldest December in 60 years and they now need more warmth for the fruit to have enough time to form and ripen. Central Otago probably has the most stunning scenery in New Zealand and vineyards pave the way to a backdrop of rivers and lakes and snow capped mountain ranges, but Central Otago is the most marginal wine region in New Zealand when it comes to the weather.
On the wine scene, summer time means festival time and drinkers are getting into party mode all around the country as wine festivals - translate that to drinking, dancing and spending a lot of money - take place everywhere.
In Auckland on Saturday 10th February there's the Waiheke Island Festival on Waiheke Island. It's just 35 minutes by boat and another 15 minutes by bus from downtown Auckland City to beautiful Isola Estate amongst the vines. Nineteen of Waiheke's 30 producers (yes, there are really that many), along with their gourmet food matching caterers, will provide sustenance to thirsty festival goers who will soak up the sun and dance the afternoon away to the likes of Anika Moa, The Nairobi Trio, the Beat Girls and more. It starts at 11am and continues until 6pm - seven hours of eating, drinking, dancing and sunburn. Not cheap though, at $65 entry and food and wine on top of that. Add another $24 return for the ferry if you are travelling by sea. But this festival is all class, class, class and you can walk through the vines one way to iconic Stonyridge Estate, or walk the other way to Te Motu.
On the Web: www.waihekewinefestival.co.nz.The famous Marlborough Wine Festival, now in its 24th year, takes place the same day, not that it matters that Waiheke and Marlborough clash, because these festivals serve different cities. While Waiheke Island is a short sea journey for Aucklanders, Wellingtonians can take a 3-hour sea journey ride, then a 35-minute bus ride to the long-serving festival grounds at Brancott Estate. For Aucklanders to go to Marlborough it takes a bit more planning. Of course, people living in main centres in the South Island can simply drive there, but hopefully they've booked accommodation as, evidently, it is already over subscribed.
I had an invitation to the Marlborough Wine Festival - or did I? The email came to my inbox, to my email address, but the first line said, "Dear Michael". Mmmm, it might have been sent to the wrong email address.
Starting at 10am and continuing 'til 6pm, with over 40 wineries offering over 200 wines to festival goers, this is a festival which you need real stamina for. The Beat Girls also play at Marlborough (work that one out) plus jazzers Twinset, songwriter Greg Johnson and high energy hip-hop, soul, funk group Rhombus. Entry tickets cost $35 with wine, food and transport on top of that.
On the Web: www.wine-marlborough-festival.co.nz.Hawkes Bay had their outing last weekend and with Harvest Hawkes Bay hosted at individual wineries and Cellarbrate at the showgrounds, there was plenty of choice for the revellers.
More festivals coming up can be found on my What's On page.
The international wine community has been here in force with special media guests taking in a Syrah Symposium in Hawkes Bay, a Pinot Noir Conference in Wellington and an Aromatics Symposium in Nelson over the last week and a bit. It's a good way for the overseas media to experience this beautiful country first hand. I liked the way bubbly, breezy Lesley Sbrocco from the United States put it. "We are here to witness what is happening in New Zealand and to share that with our readers across the world," she said.
I didn’t make Pinot Noir 2007 this year, so I can’t report on it other that what I read in press releases, but in my blog I make some references to some television interviews with some of the overseas guests.
Yes, I have a blog. I've been meaning to start one for a while, and just about did so on 1 Jan 2006, but it didn’t happen as I didn't like any of the blogging software. Now I've bitten the bullet and started a blog anyway. It is quite rudimentary while I investigate blogging software that is pretty much foolproof and secure against p0rn spammers, which is the bane of the blogging community it seems. So I started on January 1st and so far I've managed to add posts almost every day. But I can see why so many people start blogs with gusto, then give up. It's utterly time consuming. I figure, though, if you’re gong to write, then the job's half done. It doesn’t take much more effort to publish it. Virtually the press of a button, or a few buttons in my case.
There is still a Wine of the Week being posted each week, plus all the usual bits and pieces. There's a new vineyard restaurant review - Ransom Wines Wine Bar in Matakana, and a new wine book review - Marilyn Merlot and the Naked Grape - on the site. Plus tons and tons of wine reviews, organised into grape variety and vintage - and that's something I haven’t been able to work out how to do on a blog.
Recent Wines of the Week include -
Muddy Water Unplugged Riesling 2006 and reviews of nine other rieslings
Mills Reef Eslpeth Merlot 1998 from Hawkes Bay
Margrain Chenin Blanc 2006 from Martinborough.
Vavasour Cabernet Franc Rose 2006 from Marlborough.
Plus there is also my Top Wines from 2006.A Toast to the Father of New Zealand Wine
On February 6th, we celebrate Waitangi Day. It is a National Holiday. It was called New Zealand Day for a while but now it is called Waitangi Day because it commemorates the day the Treaty of Waitangi was signed by representatives of the British Crown and the Maori Chiefs in 1840. It marked the start of a new nation. Originally declared as a public holiday, a national day of thanksgiving to honour the treaty, for some it is a day of controversy and protest while for others, it's just another holiday.
So what does this have to do with wine? Quite a lot, actually, because James Busby, the first British Resident of New Zealand and one of the signatories of the Treaty of Waitangi, is also regarded as the father of Australian and New Zealand wine.
Born in 1801 in Edinburgh, James Busby's interest was firstly agriculture and later viticulture and winemaking, which he studied in France before travelling with his parents and siblings to New South Wales, Australia, arriving there in 1824. On the way, via South Africa, Busby made a tour of the vineyards around Capetown. After their arrival in Australia, the Busby family had received a land grant of 2000 acres in the Hunter and James planted his vine cuttings there. While his brother-in-law looked after the vineyard, Busby took up a position at the Boys Orphan School at Liverpool, west of Sydney, where he taught agriculture, viticulture and looked after the farm. There is now a suburb in that area named Busby.
In 1825 Busby published his first book, "A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine, and the Art of Making Wine", drawing on the writings of Chaptal and other illustrious French writers plus his own notes from his studies.
I find it interesting that even in 1825, the health benefits of wine were being extolled. The following extract is from a chapter entitled "Of the Virtues of Wine" ….
"Of all the liquors which the ingenuity of man has drawn from the productions of nature, wine may said to be, at the same time, the most varied in nature, the most excellent in its quality, and the most extended in its use. Besides its tonic and strengthening power, it is more or less nutritious and salutary in every respect. The faculty of fortifying the understanding, was attributed to it by the ancients, Plato, AEschylus, and Solomon, being agreed in according to it, this virtue. But no writer has treated better the properties of wine, than the celebrated Galen, who has assigned to each kind it proper uses, and described the differences effected in it by age, climate, &c."
Busby also writes ... "Excess in the use of wine, has in all ages excited the censure of the legislators......."
So, nothing has changed much, really.
Busby wrote a how-to book on viticulture in New South Wales before returning to England in 1831. He had written a number of reports for the Colonial Office and his report on the state of New Zealand (even though he had never been there) gained him the position of first Official British Resident for New Zealand.
While in the Northern Hemisphere, Busby made a four month tour of the vineyards of France and Spain, compiling extensive notes and collecting hundreds of grapevines cuttings, which were shipped back to Australia.. Busby collected 437 cuttings from the Montpellier Botanical Gardens and 133 from the Luxembourg Gardens all of which were gifted to the government in order to establish an experimental vineyard at the Sydney Botanical Gardens. He also collected cuttings for himself from the vineyards that he regarded as the best in France and Spain.
He would later publish the record of the visits in two publications - "Journal of a Tour Through Some of the Vineyards of Spain and France (1833); and "Journal of a Recent Visit to the Principal Vineyards of Spain and France (1834)". But first he would take up his position in New Zealand.
He arrived in this country for the first time, with his bride, Agnes (they married after Busby returned to Australian in 1832), on the H.M.S. Imogene on the 10th May 1833. The land he bought for his residence was at Waitangi and there he planted the vegetables, fruit and grapevine cuttings they had brought with them. Busby's vines were not the first to be planted in New Zealand, but they were the first planted exclusively to make wine.
Busby's garden's had much acclaim. A visiting American, J .B. Williams of Salem, Massachusetts, wrote the following in his journal ....
" A more delightful and romantic spot it would be difficult to find in the Bay. ..Mr Busby has displayed great taste about those parts of the grounds he improves, doubtless Mrs Busby must share in the credit as his worthy spouse. .. I well remember the first call I made at their pretty, neat and hospitable Mansion embodied in a grove of trees and shrubs, with flowers sending forth a rich fragrance. Mr Busby has quite a large farm under cultivation, and a fine grapery propagating fast."In 1840 the historic treaty of Waitangi was signed at Busby's residence and I'm sure a glass of Busby's wine would have been drunk that day.
Although the vineyard no longer exists, the vines would have no doubt been a source for many other vineyards in the north over the next few years - perhaps even the source for some of the vines growing here today - syrah, for example.
Busby seems to have been largely forgotten in New Zealand as Treaty issues take precedence, although the house and gardens were gifted to the people of New Zealand in 1932 as part of the Waitangi National Trust. But this prominent political figure is the father of New Zealand wine and we, as wine lovers, should not forget him. So Waitangi Day is a day for wine lovers all over the world to drink a glass of New Zealand wine - a day to toast Busby's foresight in establishing viticulture and winemaking in New Zealand.
Read more about Busby from the Encyclopedia of New Zealand .
That's all for now
Cheers,
Sue Courtney
Editor, wineoftheweek.com
mailto:wineoftheweek@clear.net.nz
www.wineoftheweek.com
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