Canterbury wine silences the critics

Press, 18 December 1985, Page 21

Canterbury wine silences the critics

By

MARTIN MOODY.

His defence of Can-

terbury wine-makers won the second prize of $l5O in the third newspaper features writing competition jointly run by “The Press” and the South Island Writers’ Association. ;

A decade ago, anybody suggesting that Canterbury would be producing top quality wines by the mid-1980s would have had difficulty attracting an audience ready to take them seriously. Experts generally agreed that the local climate was simply too cold to allow for commercial production of top-class grapes. Listening to the sceptics one would have thought that Canterbury was the normal habitat of penguins and polar bears, a region struggling to stave off the advent of another ice-age. The geographical similarities with classical winemaking areas such as the Rhine Valley in Germany, were somehow overlooked, and local wine buffs looked instead to Auckland, Hawke’s Bay, and increasingly Marlborough for the international class wines that would put the industry on the wine-making map. “The mistake we made,” says Dr David Jackson, head of the Grape and Wine Research Programme at Lincoln College, “was to overemphasise the significance of summer temperatures. Being an island climate these are marginal, compared with, say, Europe. What was not emphasised was Canterbury’s low latitude, which gives a long growing season to compensate for the cooler summers.”

It was back in 1973 that Dr Jackson’s team began their trials to establish whether or not a local industry was possible. Initially the

tradition of pessimism seemed justified; in their first year 70 per cent of the plants were lost to a late frost — an infamous but integral part of the Canterbury spring climate. Commercial prospects looked dim. An important member of that pioneering team at Lincoln College was a German-born winemaker called Danny Schuster. Although he describes the Canterbury climate as “marginal,” he believed that given the right combination of land and soil types, it would be possible

to produce great wines in good years.

A decade later, he fulfilled his own prophecy and stunned the New Zealand wine industry when a one-year-old Pinot Noir won a gold medal at the National Show and went on to earn rapturous acclaim all over the globe. Two years later he finally convinced a still unbelieving northern public by doing it again, this time with his 1984 vintage. Schuster’s talents found a commercial base when he teamed up

with two Canterbury farmers, Norman and Robin Mundy, whose family had lived off the land at Coutts Island for three generations before boldly diversifying into grape-growing at St Helena Estate, the province’s first commercial winery. Grapes were planted in 1978, on land bounded by two rivers, which gave a natural all-year round source of irrigation, crucial to young vines coping with the rigours of an occasionally hostile climate. St Helena celebrated its first vin-

tage in 1981, with the release of two whites that were snapped up by a ravenous local public. It was clear that Canterbury wine was on its way. Seven years on from the time that cuttings were first implanted in the Coutts Islands soil, Canterbury has spawned several new wineries. Although coming from widely differing backgrounds, the various winemakers share an almost religious belief in the potential of Canterbury as a region capable of producing international standard wines. Someone who should know about such things is Marcel Giesen, of the Giesen Wine Estate, at 20 years of age surely the world’s youngest chief winemaker. Marcel emigrated to New Zealand in 1980, along with the rest of his family, after his older brothers, Alex and Theo, had been vividly impressed by the country, and its wine, during a holiday a few years earlier. The Giesens chose a plot of land just off the Main South highway in Burnham, similar to their homeland in terms of sunshine hours, humidity, and soil type. With almost 75 acres in vine, the Giesen Estate is by far Canterbury’s largest, although so far the family has been dependant on Marlborough grapes, while the local vines progress through their infancy. The winery and vineyard are testament to the oft-heralded Germanic traits of efficiency and organisation. Over 10,000 vines

have been painstakingly planted in the soil, 9000 posts inserted, and a mind-boggling 18 tonnes of wire built into the intricate network of the vineyard’s trellis system. Inside the winery, the picture is one of serene, if clinical modernity, with massive steel tanks capable of holding up to 70,000 litres of wine, standing guard over a four-tonne wine press — a far cry from the traditional image of peasants treading the grapes — and a bottlefilling line capable of handling over 1500 bottles an hour.

Strangely enough, both Marcel Giesen and Danny Schuster, though German, have succeeded most with a French grape, the Pinot Noir. The 1985 Giesen Pinot Noir is a soft, very easy drinking and flavoursome red, made without any oak treatment, as is the German way with many red wines. Their Rhine Riesling and Chardonnay also look particularly promising, although they both, says Marcel, need at least two years cellaring to go within a grape’s throw of fulfilling their potential. A few miles down the road, a

young Christchurch .veterinarian turned viticulturist, has recently celebrated his second vintage. John Thom planted Larcomb Estates with grape varieties recommended by the Lincoln College team, including the early ripening Briedecker, Gew.urztraminer and Pinot Noir. John has his feet firmly on his Rolleston ground, preferring to get the basics right with clean, unpretentious whites before moving on to grander things in later vintages. Judging by a very promising, fruity Rhine Riesling, and a light delicate ■ Briedecker, those days of grandeur may not be far away. ■■ ■ North of the city, out at Amberley Estates, Jeremy Prater’s young vines seem to have come to grips with the north-westerlies, and his distinctively New Zealand property — where else would one find four hectares of grapes alongside land occupied by sheep farming and mixed cropping? — is thriving. Jeremy’s first two vintages have been snaffled up by the good citizens of Amberley, but there are hints within his 1985 Rhine Riesling

and Gewurztraminer in particular, that this combination of Swisstrained winemaker and Kiwi-bom farmer will soon be heard of in far more distant and illustrious quarters.

While these pioneering Canterbury wineries begin to step out in style, others are lurking in the wings, waiting for their debut on to the glamorous but uncertain stage of . commercial winemaking. Up to 20 sizeable vineyards are now planted all over the province, including a patch of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in the bustling metropolis of Omihi, North Canterbury; The viticulturist and future winemaker there claims a particular affinity with the famed grapes of Burgundy. Rumour has it in the foothills and valleys of North Canterbury that he goes by the name of Schuster. It could be a name worth following. i