The flight into Auckland from Melbourne yesterday was hairy to say the least. The crosswind was over 50 kilometers per hour on the runway in Auckland and the giant Emirates A380 was being thrown around like a balloon in the wind as we circled over. I don’t like it when flight attendants looked scared white. And the young guy in the Emirate’s uniform seated in front of me in the exit aisle looked like a rabbit in front of the headlights of an oncoming car.
The Australian pilot said over the intercom that we might be diverted to Christchurch on the Southern Island of New Zealand, but at the last minute he decided to take the whale-like plane in for a landing. And despite a bone-crushing touch down, we were safe and sound in Auckland and just an hour behind schedule. Unfortunately, immigration and customs took longer than the flight from Oz.
It’s the wind that gets you here – at least for the moment. The sea wind is piercing. It chills you to the bone. I was happy to get to the warm cellar of Michael Brajkovich at Kumeu River Winery for a tasting of his world-class Chardonnays.
I thought a good place to start my journey in New Zealand was with my old friend Michael. He makes some of New Zealand’s most inspiring wines. They are wines with intensity and richness yet lots of acid tension and length. I told him that his wines were very Burgundian in style but with something else as well, when we tasted a line of his various Chardonnays back to 2004.
“That’s the greatest compliment someone can give me,” he said with the line of green leaf screw cap bottles in front of him. I first met Michael in London in the late 1980s when we took the Master of Wine Exam. (He passed.) “I drink a lot of Burgundies. I love them. But I think that our wines have that plus our own character. They are very pure in fruit.”
I started exploring New Zealand wines in the late 1980s when I lived in London and followed them for about a decade. I was always impressed with their rich fruit and bright, sometimes searing acidity. What I didn’t appreciate was that many of the wines, particularly whites, were overly fruity, with an almost sickly and sweet character. As much as people write and talk about Pinot Noir from New Zealand, I find many like that. They like definition and tension.
Granted, I don’t drink NZ wine as much as I used to, being based mostly in Italy. But I try to get my nose into them when I can, and I haven’t found that many wines that really blow me away.
That’s why I decided to come to New Zealand after I judged at the Royal Melbourne Wine Show. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about with the top wines of New Zealand – particularly Pinot Noir. So I checked with a few friends such as Australian wine rapper/critic Mike Bennie and I made an itinerary of the best wineries in the country. I am island hopping the rest of this week.
Stay tuned for what I discover and videos.
