It would have been easy for New Zealand to rest on its laurels from last year, when it was awarded our Top Wine of the World. Instead, the overachieving wine country looked ahead with renewed vigor and churned out a slew of even more amazing bottles to take the Top 100 Wines of New Zealand 2022 to another level, lending more credence to the argument that the country has found its place on the global stage of great wine.
We knew that there was so much more to uncover from New Zealand, which is why we tasted over 850 Kiwi bottles this year. It was our biggest annual review of the country and done mostly on-site, with Associate Editor Nathan Slone and I tasting in Auckland, followed by James’ extensive visits and tastings with producers across the North and South Islands.
It’s clear from this year’s Top 100 Wines of New Zealand that the country’s strong suit lies with pinot noir, which gave a whopping 47 wines to the list. This is not to overlook the economic powerhouse of Marlborough sauvignon blanc, which we tasted plenty of for our recent annual report. Rather, it highlights the nation’s capacity to consistently produce exceptional wines from pinot noir, chardonnay and syrah, the top three varietals in this list, despite its agro-industrial reliance on sauvignon blanc, which covers 86 percent of the nation’s vineyard area and is responsible for three-quarters of New Zealand’s wine exports.
THE NEW ZEALAND WINE OF THE YEAR
Our top New Zealand wine of 2022 is the Ata Rangi Pinot Noir Martinborough 2020. It is textural, deep and seamlessly balanced, as well as supremely perfumed and vibrant. Made from the estate’s oldest parcels planted 42 years ago, it demonstrates the power of pinot noir coming out of Martinborough. All of Ata Rangi’s vineyards are organically farmed.
Their wines have consistently been in our top 10 New Zealand wines over the past five years. Special tribute also must be paid to a few other Martinborough producers, including Kusuda Wines, Dry River, Escarpment, Cambridge Road and The Elder, all of whose great (95-plus points) pinots and syrahs can be found on the list below. Some, like Kusuda, make extremely limited-production wines that have risen to cult status in other countries, particularly Japan.
“We do have more tannin here in this region, and if you manage that tannin well it gives a savory structure to the wine – a flow and elegance that we can get here in Martinborough compared to other regions,” Helen Masters, the winemaker behind Ata Rangi, told me via Zoom. She believes that the long growing season in Martinborough, complexity from smaller-scale vineyards, and tannin quality are key. And for her, the 2020 vintage “will always be a special vintage” amid the chaos at harvest time caused by the outbreak of COVID.
READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF THE WORLD 2022 AND OUR WINE OF THE YEAR
“I love the vintage; I feel very connected to these wines,” she said in describing the smooth 2020 season, which gave superb natural vine health, from flowering through to harvest. “We worked pretty hard to make a wine that represents Martinborough, but also who we are as people here.”
It may come as no surprise that our No. 2 wine is the Kumeu River Chardonnay Kumeu Mate’s Vineyard 2021. Although not a 100-pointer like the 2020, which was our overall No. 1 pick last year, the exceptional 2021 has once again expressed itself in a concentrated, compact and phenolic wine, where crushed stone minerality and white fruit build to a crazy intensity that lasts for minutes. At No. 13 on our global Top 100 list this year, it’s one of the greatest white wines in the world.
Our No. 3 and 4 wines are contrasting expressions of pinot noir from Central Otago, but both are made with the utmost care in the vineyard and winery. The fruit for the Rippon Pinot Noir Central Otago Tinker’s Field 2019 is produced from the estate’s oldest vines, planted in the 1980s on their own rootstocks, as winemaker Nick Mills told James on his visit there last month. All the vines at Rippon have been farmed biodynamically for almost 20 years. The 2019 bottling is cool and sophisticated, with a tight and muscular tannin presence, and is one for the cellar.
The Sato Pinot Noir Central Otago L’Insolite 2019, our No. 4 New Zealand wine, is wildly aromatic and complex, made with 100 percent whole cluster pinot noir berries farmed organically by the husband-and-wife team of Yoshiaki and Kyoko Sato.
All the wines from their six hectares of vineyards are made with a minimal-intervention approach. L’Insolite made our list despite only 1,477 bottles being made, but it is available in several markets with limited allocations. The profound concentration and length of the wine will be a joy to taste for many years to come.
Central Otago makes up over a quarter of our top New Zealand wines, and the diversity of pinots coming out of this cool region is outstanding. In the top 10 alongside Rippon and Sato, check out the Mount Edward Pinot Noir Central Otago Morrison Vineyard 2019 for its wild, sensual aromatics; Prophet’s Rock Pinot Noir Central Otago Retrospect 2017, a more compact and muscular expression; and Felton Road Pinot Noir Central Otago Block 3 2021 for its gorgeous mouthfeel and freshness.
Two more notable regions are Hawke’s Bay and Waiheke Island. Hawkes Bay and its stony Gimblett Gravels subregion have well-deserved recognition for top-notch syrahs, cabernets and fuller-bodied styles of chardonnay, from the likes of Bilancia, Te Mata, Craggy Range and Trinity Hill. Waiheke Island, in contrast, only has about 30 boutique wineries, yet managed to produce eight of the top 100 wines. It’s just a short ferry ride from Auckland, but the localized, typically warmer and drier weather conditions, combined with steep slopes and clay subsoils, give rise to full-bodied, powerful and structured wines, mostly syrah and Bordeaux-style blends.
READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF NEW ZEALAND 2021
Our No. 5 wine, the Destiny Bay Waiheke Island Magna Praemia 2020, is a muscular, dark-fruited cabernet sauvignon-based blend that needs several more years to soften, demonstrating the surprising power that the small island is capable of. The reds from Waiheke Island’s Frenchmans Hill Estate, Stonyridge, Man O’War and Mudbrick are also impressive, but at much more affordable prices compared with Magna Praemia’s $350 price tag.
We have been writing about the clarity and purity of wines from New Zealand for some time now. The freshness and intensity of fruit clearly shine through in wines from a trio of excellent vintages for the country: 2019, 2020 and 2021, which gave 75 wines to our list, with 50 from the 2020 vintage alone. Winemakers we spoke to are adapting to more extreme weather events such as frosts and untimely rain during the growing season, and New Zealand’s cooler climate in general appears less at risk than many winemakers and vine growers around the world experience now in the face of rising global temperatures. Some winemakers told us that they are even benefitting from better consistency in ripening grapes like cabernet sauvignon and other Bordeaux varieties.
As with our World Top 100, the rankings of the Top 100 New Zealand wines this year are based on the quality of the wine in the bottle and a consideration of their price and availability in the global marketplace, with few exceptions. Plus, there’s the “wow” factor, which is the emotional feeling great wines give. The average price of the wines on this list is just over $56 a bottle, with only three wines above $200 (from Destiny Bay and Bell Hill). Some great wines produced in very small quantities were not included, such as those from Puriri Hills, Gillman and Passage Rock. This highlights how New Zealand continues to be one of the best value producers in the world for highly rated wines.
– Claire Nesbitt, Associate Editor
Note: You can sort the wines below by vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.
