I certainly have not caught up with all the new labels but the annual Central Otago wine tasting in Dunedin last Thursday, with 33 producers showing nearly 150 wines - whites and reds of several vintages - offered the chance for trade representatives and wine enthusiasts to discover some unfamiliar labels and see the new releases.
Many of them I review soon after release in my weekly wine column, so I sought out new labels and some I rarely see.
One of the most impressive was the deliciously silky, complex Ceres Pinot Noir 2009 ($37), from James and Matt Dicey's vineyards at Bannockburn. James is a consultant viticulturist and Matt the winemaker at Mount Difficulty and the wine shows their expertise.
Georgetown Vineyard with its low-trained vines is on the left as you enter the Kawarau Gorge driving towards Queenstown. Its 2009 pinot noir ($42) is velvety, concentrated, harmonious and charming.
Folding Hill Pinot Noir 2009 ($38) from Bendigo is still young and restrained but already fragrant with balance and charm.
From Queensberry, Two Degrees Pinot Noir 2009 ($37) is fragrant, powerful and spicy with dark cherry fruit.
At the other end of the scale, demonstrating that generally you get what you pay for, is 2010 Totara Pinot Noir ($20), fragrant, light and simple, made in stainless steel tanks and flavoured with oak staves, produced by Endeavour Vineyards, a transtasman company with a base in Marlborough. The lighter of the Shaky Bridge wines, the Pioneer Series pinot noir 2010 ($20) from Alexandra, hints of licorice with sweet simple fruit. These are quaffers but if you are looking for something really characteristic of Central pinot, you need to pay a bit more. Surveyor Thomson Explorer Pinot Noir 2009 ($25) which is also light, fragrant and simple but has some of the charm typical of the region, is a good price.
The tasting was preceded by a master class led by Nick Mills, of Rippon, who aimed to demonstrate that the schist underlying Central Otago (and for that matter a swathe of European vineyards from Portugal to Germany) could produce wine with precision, clarity, layers of complexity and structure.
This can be recognised in the texture and feel of the wine, whatever the variety, rather than the flavour or smell, especially when the vines are older and well-tended so their roots are deep in the soils, he says.
