Steve Smith
Some of Hawke's Bay's best wines were put to the test in
a tasting in Bordeaux late last month, overseen by Steve Smith,
MW of Craggy Range.
Tasting the wines were proprietors and winemakers of the
grandes chateaux, and media.
Mr Smith showed wines from Craggy Range, Trinity Hill, Church
Road, Villa Maria and Sacred Hill across three vintages.
The wines were inspired by the great cabernet merlot blends
of Bordeaux but they made no aspiration to be Bordeaux-like,
he said.
"They make no statement of a comparison.
They simply speak of our place and our people, and this is
why we invited the Bordelaise to have that experience.
"For those of us on the other side of the world, much of our
fine wine inspiration comes from the great wines of France
and their producers.
Many of us have visited these great producers and all who
have ambitions to make fine wine have crafted their
inspiration from those visits," he told the French tasters.
The French guests were typically Gallic in their response.
Jean Claude Berrouet, of Chateau Petrus, noted "from New
Zealand where men of character enhance an original nature by
producing wines with unexpected complexity and subtlety.
They do not create wines that compete with ours but rather
wines which are ambassadors, expressing the classic basics
taught in college; namely, harmony and balance, and which do
not fall into the trap that excess is so as to give the
illusion of quality.
Basically, they are the image of their rugby: they defend the
real values of life!"
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