Visiting
New Zealand's
wine regions
Part 3: Montana
Rapaura vineyard, Marlborough
Scale matters with wine. Usually, big companies
aren’t great. Wine tends to work better with smaller outfits. But
big companies are very important, because the shape of the modern
industry means that small-scale operations find it difficult to reach
the market.
For any national industry, it’s really good news if
the big companies are performing well. Look at Chile: their biggest
company is Concha y Toro, who are making some very smart wines.
Montana is New Zealand’s giant, part of the Pernod Ricard group that
includes other brands such as Stoneleigh. And it is tremendously good
news for New Zealand that Montana and associated outfits are doing
really well.
With just a day and a half in Marlborough, I made a
decision about how to spend my time. I could have crammed it full with
appointments, but instead I decided to spend half a day with
Winegrowers of Ara (reported on in the previous part of this write-up)
and then the second day with Montana, who were real pioneers in the
Marlborough region. I figured that this
concentration of time would give me a better overview of the region
than multiple small visits. And in retrospect, I think this was the
correct decision.
So, in the morning I toured around the different
sub-regions with Katie Speakman of Montana, and then lunched and
tasted with winemaker Patrick Materman. There's a short
film taken around the various bits of Marlborough below.
Let’s begin with some geography. There’s a really
good map of the region online at http://gis.marlborough.govt.nz/accept.cfm,
and you also get a nice view of the Marlborough region via the
satellite pictures on google maps.
Montana's
Brancott Estate
Basically, the main bit of Marlborough is the Wairau
Valley, a long, broad plain heading west (inland) from the town of
Blenheim. This is pretty much back to back vineyards. To the north are
the Richmond Ranges; to the South the Wither Hills – these frame the
valley quite nicely. The north-western section of the Wairau Valley is
a subregion known as the Rapaura road. To the west (inland), there’s
a river called the Waihopai that joins the Wairau. It’s here that
the Winegrowers of Ara (first part of this series) are located.
Awatere
Valley
The Awatere Valley is a second river valley south of
the Wairau, over the Wither Hills. This also has a subregion, called
Seaview, which is to the east, nearer the coast. Awatere has amaritime influence and the grapes have a longer ripening
season. The main part of Awatere produces Sauvignon with a more
herbaceous character; Seaview is known for tomato leaf and mineral
characters.
Frost is a big problem in Marlborough in general, and
in particular in the Awatere Valley. We saw some evidence of frost
damage in Montana’s Seaview vineyard (above). The Friday before I visited
Marlborough had 100 helicopters out flying over the vineyards in the
dead of night, at NZ$1500–2000 per hour, plus transit time. Ouch.
The idea is that the helicopters get warmer air from what is known as
the inversion layer and send it downwards. On a clear night – of the
sort where frost is most likely – the temperatures are lowest close
to the ground and there is some warmer air higher up, which is then
used as a source of heat for frost protection. Aside from helicopters,
a popular alternative for mixing the inversion layer is the use of
giant wind machines, which dot the landscape here. A further option is
to use sprinklers: if the buds are covered in water, this becomes ice
and this acts as an insulation protecting against more damaging
temperatures. In addition, some heat is released when the ice forms
(fusion).
The
Montana winery
A major new project in the Seaview area is Yealands,
which will be a 1000 hectare property when it is finished. It’s
owned by Peter Yealands, and the ambitious plan is to process 10 000
tons of its own grapes in its sparkling new winery by 2013. Yealands
is described on his own website as a ‘local legend’ (www.yealands.co.nz).
There are also 50 hectares of vineyards near Blenheim.
After visiting the Awatere, we headed for the Rapaura
road, where the Stoneleigh winery is located. The surface soil of the
vineyards here look quite different, with big river pebbles evident
– known as ‘sunstones’.
Then we looked at the Brancott Estate. Much
photographed, this is in the south-east of the Wairau Valley, and
it’s quite beautiful – spread over a huge area, with gentle
contours.
Brancott
Estate
Then it was time for lunch and a tasting, which are
reported here.
