Chateau Brown Pessac-Leognan Bordeaux

‘What a great job I have of tasting wine all day’ is the comment I hear most. To be honest it is a damn fine job until you taste some crap wine or crap wine all day! Then the job is transformed into what a poor job I have to make sure that the consumer doesn’t have to go through what I have just been through.

Tasting good wine is an experience, and as Wine Vault TV grows so does the experience of tasting good wine.
I had the fortune of tasting two fine wines from the same Chateau on Saturday and this is where the description ‘Great Job’ is applied.

The Chateau Brown 1998 from Pessac-Leognan was still youthful in both its colour and bouquet and on the palate. There were hints of lime, rubber footwear, and apricot with a splash of lemon on the nose and a textural experience that one seeks but seldom finds in new world white wine.

The Chateau Brown 2002 was slightly troubled and represented the vintage down to a T. The vintage was hard for the fruit and winery staff with the prolonged cold and frost with poor fruit set and wet summer topped off by a colder but more stable August and September. These final 2 months were its’ saving grace. The wine tasted slightly botrytised with hints of honey, lemon, lime and apricots and the nose slightly dull compared to the youthful 1998. The palate was very satisfying but still lacked the charisma of the ’98, overall it was great to taste wines that sang a song of the vintage rather than industrial wine that sings the same song each year.

I hope that Marlborough sings a different song each year from now on!

Danger! What are we doing to our National Grape?

After a recent visit to Marlborough It still leaves me staggering at what we, as a wine producing country, are doing to the grape varietal that put us on the World Wine Map.

We are in danger of losing out to the competition, for countries like Chile are able to adopt our techniques, Yeasts, and winemakers to reproduce Marlborough Styled Sauvignon Blanc at half the price.

Let’s look at the facts that support the decision to harness our reputation and make better wine.

The average Vineyard/winery wage is $18 vs $4 for the average wage in Chile. This allows wineries to hand pick fruit or machine harvest for even greater margin or lower price. We have made Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc to a recipe which allows other countries to copy and for cheaper. The irrigation that is allowed on New Zealand vineyards dilutes the effect of Terroir and then we machine harvest thus increasing the need to add more Sulphur Dioxide to stop the grapes from oxidising and starting to ferment on route to the winery.

Then we fine and filter the wine thus removing more of the natural character of the grape and then start the fermentation off with a cultured yeast.

The cultured yeast is available for all to buy and therefore our competitors in this ever so hard market.

Given our isolation we should be making a premium wine and something that resembles Sauvignon Blanc not an industrial chemical with a taste so homogenous that it is easy to replicate year after year.

It is time to get back to where we started and make better wine, not the same, but better.

There are some wineries that are championing the cause of terroir expression but not enough to sustain New Zealand’s image overseas.

The cost of NZ Sauvignon Blanc remains high overseas but when a Marlborough Styled wine from Chile can be bought for a quarter of the price who isn’t going to look at a spending reduction on a luxury item?

Please leave a comment.

Oliver Driver of TV3 on Wine Vault TV

www.thewinevault.co.nz