A true guide to New Zealand wine

Press, 30 November 1978, Page 13

A true guide to New Zealand wine

Minutes after I had met Peter Saunders in his Mangere flat he had me seated at his kitchen table confronted by seven i different glasses of wine which he asked me to identify. There was an absolute minimum of ceremony in ' our meeting as Peter seems i to hold the opinion that we are on this earth to drink wine, and so we should get on with it. Needless to say I failed to identify the wines and in my marking of them managed to write off a premium French white burgundy because its flavour was alien to my palate. Most of the wines were from a single local winemaker and Peter was evaluating them for his 1978 edition of “A Guide to New Zealand Wine.” In 1976 he published his first copy of this guide and . attracted a barrage of criticism from the wine inI dustry with critics describ- | ing the book as vituperai tive, inelegant, brash, and i bad news. In this first guide Peter made no bones about his disillusionment with several winemakers who consistently produced fautly wine. And although the book was produced to aid the wine-drinking public, it was I the over-sensitive wine ini dustry that took it to task ; with some unfortunate : personal ramifications for < its author. It is to Peter Saunders’s ' credit that he remained un- , daunted by the industry's onslaught ’ and produced i an updated version of “A : Guide to New Zealand ■I Wine” in 1977. And now the 1978 ; edition is on the market. I in which the author steadI fastly retains his loyalty to ! the wine consumer and | continues to let off the odd I broadside at the wine industry in New Zealand and i some of its products. | Successive editions of the guide have contained

more chapters than their predecessors, and new in the latest edition are sections on the Wine Institute, the wine market, competitions, the future, and ageing wine at home. It is all sensible comment presented in the simple, no-nonsense style that Peter uses in his newspaper and magazine columns and which is his reaction against the flowery, roundabout writing styles used by so many international wine writers. I remember this tall (6ft lOin) wino towering over me once and bawling me out for describing a wine as “interesting” — a word which conveyed absolutely nothing to him about my reaction to the wine, which was probably my intention. And yet he uses the word frequently in his descriptions of commercially available New Zealand wine. Despite this small inconsistency this section is the most important in the book as it gives one man’s assessment of hundreds of •’’ines found on wine shop shelves. It would seem that the wine industry has learned to live with Peter Saunders as he is just as outspoken in the 1978 guide as he was in 1976 and yet the howls of outrage are noticeably muted. But the comments such as “badly oxidised and absolutelv undrinkable” and "I found it overly rough and couldn’t drink •t” are there to guide the unsure towards sound wine-buying and appreciation. When Peter Saunders thinks a wine is good, he says so and each year he finds that more wines nt into this category. Priced at $4.25. “A Guide to New Zealand Wine’ may seem expensive but I assure the budding connoisseur that this investment will prove worth while if only in terms of bad purchases avoided, and rfo doubt the fully blown connoisseurs will delight in having their prejudices confirmed (or confounded?)