Proof the South Island can produce a good Bordeaux-style red

Inadvertently, a few weeks back, I stumbled across the answer to a question I hadn't really intended asking, but which had often flitted perfidiously across my consciousness - usually eliciting something of a forlorn response.

Can the South Island really produce a good Bordeaux-style red?

As it happened I had over to dinner a friend from Italy, a chap who knows and likes his wines.

I had run out of my usual favourite reds - any one of a number of Central Otago or Waipara pinot noirs.

But I did have, sitting on the rack, where it had been gathering dust for quite some time - possibly three or four years, which you have to admit shows a hitherto concealed degree of restraint on my part - a Pegasus Bay Merlot Cabernet 2004.

This is essentially the wine - or blend of wines - that in the best years is fashioned by the Donaldsons into a deluxe version, called Maestro.

Now, 2004 was not one of those years, so one might have thought we were starting at something of a disadvantage.

Not a bit of it. This wine was a revelation.

Lovely nose, soft, with plenty of body from smooth, well-integrated tannins, it nonetheless had real character.

The cabernet was definitely there with its curranty, spicy notes, the malbec seemed to lend its merlot component a bit of an edge and whatever the cabernet franc, which completes the make-up, was doing, it was certainly doing something good.

Oak treatment, which I subsequently read up about on the winery's website, delivered hints of smoky, vanilla complexity and the malo-lactic fermentation dampened the natural acidity and rounded the whole texture-flavour thing off.

Incidentally for anyone wanting to get a bit of picture of the complexity and care that typically goes into crafting a wine like this, those same notes (http://www.pegasusbay.com/tasting-notes-merlot-cabernet-2004) are a useful insight and typify the winemaking approach taken by this outfit.

To those like myself who don't pretend to have encyclopaedic vintage memories, according to those same notes 2004 in Waipara, north Canterbury, produced "a mild spring . . . followed by extremely hot weather over the early and middle parts of the summer . . .

Subsequently the weather moderated and the autumn was dry, lingering and warm".

My friend was bowled over by the resultant wine - and quite frankly so was I.

Regular perusers of this column will perhaps not be surprised to read of my enthusiasm for yet another wine from this Waipara family winery.

Yet this particular wine was one I had somehow contrived to avoid - perhaps because I knew it wouldn't be up to much.

Or because, when faced with the choice of a Bordeaux-style blend of predominantly merlots and cabernets, in comparison you get an awful lot of bottle for your buck by crossing the ditch.

But a really good wine has the ability to upend your prejudices, and I had for some years quite happily nursed the notion that any New Zealand wine with cabernet sauvignon in it from south of Hawke's Bay wasn't really worth spending too much time with.

Happily, how wrong you can be.

ps. Likely as not, the 2004 is no longer available, but more recent vintages should be.