Visiting
New Zealand's
wine regions
Part 2: Winegrowers of Ara/Composite Wines
After
a few days down in Dunedin - which, at the tip of South Island,
is close to the end of the earth - I headed up to Marlborough for my
first taste of NZ wine country. It was an overcast, blustery
late-spring day, but there was still a good view of the carpet of
vineyards as we descended to the small airstrip near Blenheim town
(see the video, below). There
really isn't much here apart from vineyards, and it must have been
impossibly quiet before the wine industry turned this into New
Zealand's largest wine region.
My
first stop in Marlborough was with Dr Damian Martin (below), who heads up an
interesting new venture called Winegrowers of Ara. Damian isn't your
typical NZ winemaker. He studied winemaking in Bordeaux and developed
a fascination with the science of terroir. 'I got to know what was
fact and what was embellished', recalls Martin. 'I also got to know
the ins and outs of the regulation of appellation systems'. After his
studies, he was faced with a choice: to stay in Europe, or head back
to the home country. 'I always thought there was more opportunity in
New Zealand once I finished studying, but also the opportunity to do
something different by creating an origin brand', says Martin.
So
what precisely is an 'origin brand'? According to Martin, it’s a
wine brand that (1) reflects its location; and (2) combines the
philosophy of how things are done. 'I learned that the human component
is just as important as the physical characters of the site’, he
continued. ‘The way things are done influences the product as much
as the soil type and the climate'. So this is a fresh vision of
terroir, where the way of doing things, itself based on an underlying
philosophy, is combine seamlessly with characteristics of the wine
that stem from its location (which is the traditional view of terroir).
Martin is trying to put ideas of terroir and appellation into a modern
framework, and also a business model.
When
Martin returned to NZ after his studies he went to work for Corbans, a
company that was subsequently purchased by Montana. He still had the
dream of creating a new venture, but needed a property to go with it,
and was looking for a unique piece of land in Marlborough. When the
time came to begin the Ara project, he had such an ideal property in
mind, which was one that he'd visited with Corbans in late 1999.
The
site in question (above) is basically an entire river terrace at the meeting
point of the Waihopai and Wairau rivers, and is a huge
patch of land. It’s around 1600 hectares, and along with this Ara
also own 1000 adjoining hectares of hill country, but this is too
steep for viticulture. Dryland farmed until late 1999, the previous
owner had secured water rights but didn't have the capital to make use
of these. When Ara bought it, there were no vines planted. The reason
Martin thought this could be 'it' is because it was a single land
form, different to anywhere else in Marlborough and with the terrace
at higher altitude than other Marlborough sites.
‘The
terrace formed after glaciation’, explains Martin. ‘The geology in
NZ is active, and large terraces tend to get eroded or re-covered in
sediment. This terrace has been protected sitting on the main Wairau
fault line at the junction of two plates.’ Apparently, the soil is
older than most of the others in Marlborough: the whole region has an
alluvial gravel base, on top of which there is a light icing of silt.
This gravel was laid down by the Wairau river, and the youngest soils
tend to be gravel with sand, with relatively little fine material.
They tend to be fertile with low water holding capacity. Here the age
has leached the soil and it's a little less fertile, but the presence
of clay and other fine material gives the soil good water holding
capacity. The weathering in Marlborough goes down 1 metre, which
compares with the 5 or 6 metres of weathering you'd typically find in
the Rhone.
Given
his French roots, Martin does viticulture a little differently to his
neighbours. The density of planting here is 5000 vines hectare,
compared with the 2000 per hectare typical for Marlborough. Spacing of
rows is 1.6 × 1.5 metres, which compares with the typical row width
of 2.4 metres. In the early days in Marlborough 3 metre row width was
common, but few people use this now. Martin adds that in Europe the
typical planting density was a massive 25 000 vines per hectare, which
only changed when vines began to be planted in rows, in which case the
row width was determined by the width of a horse or cow, at about 0.9
metres. The 3 or 3.5 metre row width commonly found in the new world
was because many of the people planting already had tractors which
necessitated this spacing. Irrigation of the vineyard is through spray
heads, which is also the method of frost control – essential for
this site. To power the spinklers, Ara have a large lake and pumping
station, which has four monster 600 hp motors that can each pump 600
litres per second.
The
vines are cane pruned with 2 canes of nine buds left on each vine at
pruning. ‘By the end of Spring I’ll have 390 hectares under vines,
in 180 different blocks whose size is determined by soil
variability’, says Martin. He gets good within-block uniformity.
‘I’d like to think that in small parcels we'll start to make
something pretty special.’
Six-headed
spray rig mounted on a mechanical harvester
Composite
Sauvignon Blanc 2007 Nicely
refined aromatic nose is a little green but not too in-yer-face. The
palate is quite broad and elegant texturally with rounded fruity
character. Nicely savoury with a grapefruity freshness and stone
fruit/white peach characters. Very impressive. 90/100
‘We're
trying to build a wine that has both an aromatic component and also
nice texture,’ explains Martin. ‘The blending process is about
texture and maximizing aromatic lift. We have played around with some
hand-picked whole bunch pressed wine and also some warm-fermented
components’. (12–14 °C is normal for Marlborough; Martin has done
a bit at 18–20 °C.)
Composite
Pinot Noir 2006 The
first vintage of this wine. Attractive nose of dark cherry and
blackberry fruit is fresh with a hint of coke/chocolate. The rounded
palate has a savoury, spicy edge to the bright fruit. It isn't just
about primary fruit, though: there's some complexity, too. 20% of this
was aged iin new oak. 91/100
Ara
Resolute Pinot Noir 2005
First
crop Pinot from a special block. Fantastic sweet dark fruit nose with
a bit of spiciness. Really refined and quite complex. The palate is
smooth and elegant with intense dark fruits. It is quite rich but
still elegant, with some tarriness from the oak. Hints of earth, too.
91/100
‘It’s
pretty unexpected to get a wine like this from the first crop’,
remarks Martin.These are interesting wines, and while it seems quite brave to
be embarking on such a large-scale project in a frost-prone area that
hasn't yet proven itself, these initial wines suggest that Ara could
have a bright future indeed.
