Friday, March 5, 2010

Is Montana Fine Wine an Oxymoron?

Reading through the pages of The New Zealand Herald today I was alarmed to read that Montana's aim to make a Sauvignon Blanc that raises the bar for the price of Sauvignon Blanc. Montana is a company that has exported large volumes, in my personal opinion of cheap nasty wine, to the world. Large Wineries, along with a couple of other producers, have contributed greatly to the decline of our image of New Zealand as a great wine making country, with the fire sale of Sauvignon Blanc!

Now Montana want to make a Sauvignon Blanc in "Relatively small quantities" saying "I don't think Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc has realised the price point it should". To me this statement is contradictory to the core of its business. Montana have long been heavily discounting their wines in Supermarkets and have repeatedly driven down the price of Sauvignon Blanc, both nationally and internationally. 

Now all of this is to change with the appointment of a new 'Head Winemaker' Patrick Materman. The irony in Montana's new found interest of expensive Sauvignon Blanc will not be lost on the wine drinking public. 

I would dearly love to taste this new wine and wonder whether economics are at play here too! I wonder whether the fruit will have been hand harvested, rather than machine harvested where the grapes are badly treated and need more preservative to stop them fermenting in the backs of large lorries.

Here is a video of the treatment of our national grape in the large industrial factories that we, in the new world, call wineries.

The video footage is not that of Montana's Marlborough Winery.

I am not sure the business decision in Montana wanting to start creating an upmarket brand when, domestically, they are seen as inexpensive supermarket wines.

This new venture in Sauvignon Blanc is decision by a man that wants to remove corks from Champagne and replace them with beer bottle caps!

Posted via web from The Wine Vault

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