Michael Seresin, a London filmmaker who was the cinematographer on ''Midnight Express,'' has spent millions in the last few years to establish a 110-acre vineyard called Seresin Estate, with plantings of sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and six other varietals. That's bare land, remember, plus another 10 to 12 to establish your vineyard.''īut people continue to pay the freight. ''Today prime land, if you can find it, costs about $12,000 an acre. ''In 1970, you could buy land here for $25, if you were silly enough to want it,'' said James Healy, Cloudy Bay's gregarious enologist, as we drove through the vineyards that now carpet the Wairau Valley. Me, I love it, not least for the way it complements seafood. They find the flavor too voluptuous, like the scent of gardenias. Some people, particularly those who relish the metallic snap of Sancerre and its cousins, bridle at Cloudy Bay's ripeness. Especially at Cloudy Bay, sauvignon blanc gives birth to a wine that fills the mouth with flavors of unmatched pungency, reminiscent of tropical and other fruits (is it mango and apricot, or maybe litchi and passion fruit?), with a finishing snap of lime. But not in the picturesque Marlborough district at the northeast end of the South Island. In France, this same grape produces fragrant and flinty wines like Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume in California, it yields wines that are softer and sometimes grassy in flavor. It all started with Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc, which bowled drinkers over when it arrived in London in 1985. In a mere dozen years, those far-off islands, previously known to most foreigners (if known at all) for sheep and alpine splendor and trout the size of Hulk Hogan, have established a reputation for superb wines, first in Britain and now in the United States. Like South Africa, like Chile, like Australia, New Zealand is a Southern Hemisphere latecomer to the shelves of American wine shops. When you stand in New Zealand's most acclaimed vineyard and look north, you see the same romantic view you see when you pick up a bottle of the sauvignon blanc that made the nation's name among wine lovers - the Richmond Ranges in silhouette, their jagged peaks softened by the mist, rising above a line of evergreens. Some pictures may lie, but not the one on the Cloudy Bay label.
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