NobleRottersSydney - NZTrip - Martinborough

The day in Martinborough:

At Charles Simon’s stunningly-sited house, on a little outcrop jutting over the lower terrace with expansive views over the neat vine rows, the distant ribbon-river and the verdant hills behind (claimed by TJ to be unusually green at present), we got stuck into a picnic lunch, and a couple more wines.

• 2007 Craggy Range Sauvignon Blanc Ara Vineyard

  New Zealand, South Island, Marlborough

  {screwcap, 13.5%} Nearly clear in colour. Always difficult to assess wine outdoors. This has enough aromas to cope. Tight gooseberries and lime. Dash of kiwi-fruit. Avoids overly tropical-fruit aspects. There’s plenty of acid on the light-bodied palate. Tart and interesting fruit with some classic pungency. Softened a little as it warmed up. Better than last night’s wine. As ever, best drunk young.

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• 2006 Craggy Range Pinot Noir Single Vineyard Te Muna Road Vineyard

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {screwcap, 14%, NZ$60} Always fun to drink a wine while standing in the middle of its source vineyard. Classic new world pinot nose, with clean cherry-like fruits, although there’s a little dark-chocolate element lurking underneath, promising more than just a ‘fruit drink’. On the palate, unexpected but welcome smoky-bacon flavours emerge in addition to the classic red fruits. Nicely dry, with soft chalky/silky tannins, a medium cut of acidity, medium weight body and even, persistent palate length. All to scale, and rather beguiling. Given that it was tasted outdoors as well, a very competent wine indeed. Has all the elements to suggest it should improve for 5 years at least.

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With smiles still on our faces, we head off to Palliser Estate, a long time high flyer in Martinborough. 2008 is their 21st vintage, and proprietor Richard Riddiford hosts us before handing over to assistant winemaker Pip Goodwin for an in-depth look at the wines. The second label is called Pencarrow; we alternate through the tasting depending on variety. The wines came at a clip, so some notes are pretty cursory.

• 2007 Palliser Estate Sauvignon Blanc Pencarrow

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {screwcap, 13%, NZ$16} Slightly sweaty, gooseberry-like/straw/asparagus nose. A near-dry (or seems so due to the high acidity) palate is fresh and tart, light-medium in body, and simple undemanding drinking. Saw this on sale in a Havelock bottle shop for NZ$12.

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• 2007 Palliser Estate Sauvignon Blanc

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {screwcap, 13.5%} There’s greater depth to the nose of the estate wine. A riper green, if you like. Again, plenty of acidity offsets the imperceptible 3g/l of RS. The palate is quite flinty, though it’s still mostly fruit rather than earth. There’s some leesy complexity, a practice which is far less successful down in Marlborough than here in the north.

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• 2007 Palliser Estate Riesling

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {screwcap, 12%, NZ$16} Sweetly apple-like fruit on the nose, with a touch of sherbert. It’s a very light fruity style, but even with 6g/l of RS I find the acid a bit soft, and the wine consequently a bit flabby in the way a true Kabinett is not.

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• 2007 Palliser Estate Pinot Gris

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {screwcap, 13.5%, NZ$19} Yellow-green. Moderate nose of typical soft pear-like aromas. The few grams of residual sugar here serve to thicken the texture, rather than add obvious sweetness. Why does so much pinot gris seem to resemble sewing machine oil? Low acid, light medium body. Somewhat nebulous. Drink up.

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• 2006 Palliser Estate Chardonnay Pencarrow

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {screwcap, 13%, NZ$11} This seemed to me to be quite developed for such a young wine. Anonymous white fruit aromas dominated by secondary barrel ferment characters (20% saw wild yeast), which made it taste a bit bilgey to me. A flat palate, a little grapefruit, then a short finish. Did something go wrong here?

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• 2007 Palliser Estate Chardonnay

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {screwcap, 13.5%, NZ$28} This is much better. Youthful and classy. Lovely oak notes, ripe chardy fruit. Dry palate, powdery tannins. Medium body and intensity, fresh cut of acid, creamy texture – pretty much textbook cool-climate chardonnay.. Might age a couple of years, but see older vintage notes…

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• 2000 Palliser Estate Chardonnay

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  Tasting 2000 & 2002 vintages: joint note. So, some older chardonnays are being cleared through the cellar door. But it’s not looking good. Cabbage-like aromas, vegetative flavours, funky and over-developed. Flat palates, non-existent finishes. The 2002 has the better palate, but a worse nose. Pass on both. In fairness, Richard did say that the vintage ‘quality variation’ in Martinborough was as high as 50%, suggesting highly variable wines. A point to note; despite the different closures (cork & screwcap), you wouldn’t say the aging profile of these two wines was significantly different.

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• 2004 Palliser Estate Chardonnay

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {screwcap, 13.5%, NZ$40} Poor showing by the 2000 & 2002 vintages made this wine such a surprise. The pick of the chardonnays. Nose at peak of development. Nuts and figs, integrated oak, all bottle aged to perfection. No malo in this wine. A medium-length, medium bodied white, with sustaining acid and a moderately complex dry finish. Needless to say, drink now!

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• 2007 Palliser Estate Pinot Noir Pencarrow

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {screwcap, 14%, NZ$22} This wine is about in line with the price. Youthful, with sappy, stalky cherry fruit, it’s not unripe on the palate but lacks polish and refinement, with gritty tannins and a short, abrupt finish. Not hot, though, but hardly a wine worth seeking out.

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• 2006 Palliser Estate Pinot Noir

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {screwcap, 14%, NZ$35} Youthful smoky strawberry and earth aromas. Fruity but not exuberant. On the palate there’s a touch of not-distracting stalkiness, ripe pinot fruit, subtle oak, and a generally silky texture. Powdery tannins contribute to the medium-bodied weight and nicely balanced finish. Attractive wine, and although hardly a benchmark is certainly worth the 50% price premium over the Pencarrow. Of Palliser’s typical 50,000-case production, about 15,000 is pinot of some kind.

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• 1997 Palliser Estate Riesling

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {cork, 12.5%} Super aged Riesling nose of honey and citrus, with no hint of petroleum. Acid is balanced with sweetness, and the palate manages to remain aged yet fresh at the same time. So, the ugly duckling does become a swan! A second bottle was retrieved to prolong the enjoyment, but due to the romance of cork (TCA) it was undrinkable.

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• 2000 Palliser Estate Riesling

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  The results are not quite so delightful here (as the 1997). In fact the 99 is a little fresher than the 2000, and both do hint at the glories of the 97, but there’s just enough creeping oxidative character to mute the enjoyment. Neither the acid nor sweetness is a problem, and the balance is good, it’s just that the whole package is beginning to tire a little. In isolation, they’d be fine, but beside the 97… We’ll chalk it up to the vintage, I guess.

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Dinner at Wendy Crawford’s The French Bistro, Martinborough, winner of the Cuisine Magazine’s ‘Best Regional Restaurant’ award.

• 2007 Ata Rangi Chardonnay Craighall

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {screwcap, 13.5%} Only the palest of straw-greens, this limpid wine presents a youthful nose of nuts, stones, and fine-grained French oak. The chalkily tannic palate offers a smoky, almost dusty mineral-like take on a Burgundian theme. Stone fruit flavours play second fiddle to structure, which impresses by its length and sense of scale. A noble, elegant wine of great distinction.

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• 2006 Martinborough Vineyard Riesling Jackson Block

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {screwcap, 12.5%} Well, the [today's] Rieslings are getting better. This has a steely, minerally, almost metallic nose, with a dash of glazed honey fruit. On the palate, the steeliness takes a backseat and citric flavours are predominant. With minimal sugar, there’s an acidic austerity about this wine that verges on the powerful. Seems not to budge at all even as it warms up in the glass – a lovely wine with a persistent finish. I’m not brave enough to predict an aging curve, sorry.

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• 2006 Palliser Estate Pinot Noir The Great Harry

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {magnum, cork, 14.5%, NZ$84/750ml} This is the top-of-the-tree Palliser pinot, named after a special dog. Don’t ask. For the technocrats, it’s a blend of clones 667 and 777, and spends 16 months in oak, one-third of it new. It’s a mid-garnet colour, with perfumed, silky red berry fruit on the nose. The palate, despite a distinct tartness, nevertheless manages some rich plummy fruit flavours. Chalky tannins are pronounced but don’t dominate the finish. Overall, the wine is a little raw and disjointed, but it doesn’t seem to be anything time won’t fix. So, a very good wine, but at such a price premium over the regular release that it becomes a non-starter for me.

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• 2006 Kusuda Pinot Noir

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {cork, 14%} This has a tough act to follow [Palliser Great Harry 2006], and it shows. Garnet, with a pungent medieval nose harbouring a hint of mustiness. Quite light on the palate, with soft powdery tannins. Acid is a bit spiky and the warm, almost hot finish all piles up on the front palate before collapsing quickly. A simple, even coarse wine for unthinking drinking.

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• 2006 Ata Rangi Pinot Noir

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa, Martinborough

  {screwcap, 13.5%, NZ$65} A ring-in. I’d bemoaned the fact the scheduled trip to Ata Rangi was cancelled this afternoon due to time constraints. Rotters around the table conspired to buy this wine from the restaurant list, then pass a glass of it down to me, with the advice it was a ‘complimentary house wine’ assembled by tonight’s providors. That was a dirty trick. Early last year, the Washington Post did an experiment to see whether art can transcend context. They had the famous virtuoso Joshua Bell, in jeans and T-shirt, play violin masterpieces – Bach, and so forth – on his multi-million dollar Stradivarius in a Washington metro station at 8am on a Friday morning to observe the result. Not a good one for cultural awareness, it has to be said, as he was routinely ignored by dozens of people. Rather shamefacedly, I have to report a similar oenological result. I judged the nose to be clean, with fairly simple, but ripe, red fruits. The palate I called monolithic, mainly because of the strong, if fine, tannins. As a house red it didn’t seem so great. More fool me. Coming back to it half an hour later (and with no previous vintage experience of the wine), I can easily enough see why it might be a great wine in time. All the ingredients are there, but tightly bound; the general air of reticence disguises the potential well. The length of finish is there, even if it’s hard to pin it down precisely. I think I need to try an older vintage now. And stop making value judgements influenced by external factors…

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• 2006 Schubert Müller-Thurgau Dolce

  New Zealand, North Island, Wairarapa

  {375ml, cork, 9%} A moderate gold colour. There are vaguely-confected, floury, pastry-like aromas here, which show bubble-gum notes in time. Thick on the palate – not much acid – but without depth. It’s like a sponge-cake that didn’t quite work, in all rather superficial. Sweet, yes, but without freshness. A gentle, short-term sweetie of no great note.

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