Fine Wines and Sumptuous Lodges In New Zealand

I'm picking up a lot of the cassis—the black currant fruit," says Steve Skinner, the assistant winemaker at Trinity Hill Vineyard in Hawke's Bay, as he swirls a sample of almost vermilion liquid around his glass. "But I'm seeing the savory side of the bottle aging—a certain leathery character and a lot of lanolin." Travel in New Zealand and you had better learn to speak the language of vintners and wine tasters. You might find yourself chatting about Cabernet with a cabbie, and Pinot Noir with a parking attendant.

Twenty years ago wine connoisseurs scoffed at the idea of anything good coming from the antipodes. Australia's extraordinary oenic successes proved them wrong, and now New Zealand Pinots and Sauvignons are on some of the world's most fastidious wine lists. For about $2 you can taste six or eight samples at many of the regional wineries, then weave—or wobble—your way back to a luxurious lodge for a bottle of your favorite.

The Hawthorne Country House, tel: (64-6) 878-0035, in Hawke's Bay, a premier winegrowing region, makes the perfect base for a wine education tour. Only a short drive from nearly 40 vineyards, the rambling Edwardian mansion features creaking floors, leaded lights and neatly tended gardens complete with croquet hoops and bunnies. The ample verandas of the five well-appointed rooms are ideal for enjoying bottled souvenirs of a day spent sampling the local vintages.

Trinity Hill, a short drive from the Hawthorne Country House, provides a good introductory lesson on viticulture. The winery is at the heart of the Gimblett Gravels, a 850-hectare triangle of stony ground that was first planted with vines nine years ago. The gravel reflects heat back onto the grapes, helping them ripen even in a wet year, something all too common on New Zealand's lush North Island.

The world's newest wine-making country inevitably measures itself against its elders. "We can't and don't want to emulate Australian Shiraz," says Trinity Hill's Skinner. "We don't have the climate for it. We're focused more on a Rhône and a French Syrah." French wines may be the yardstick, but there's none of the secrecy or insiders-only air. Trinity prefers an educated customer and dedicates $18,000 worth of wine a year to tastings and educational sessions in their glass-and-concrete visitors hall, where discussions range from harvest dates, crushing methods, blending, filtering, fermenting to even the process of chapitalization (the adding of sugar).

The tiny Alpha Domus vineyard is far more casual—the manager even pours the samples himself from the back of an old shed—but the wines are even better. Although only a few kilometers from Trinity, the soil is richer and the wine correspondingly more fruity. Like many other wineries, Alpha Domus roasts the interiors of their wine casks, and charts on the stacked barrels describe the procedure and how it enhances the taste.

In theory very little wine is consumed at tastings: professional oenophiles usually spit it out once the taste buds have done their jobs. For amateurs, On Yer Bike rents bicycles by the day and includes a sack lunch, map and a mobile phone in case you have trouble with your purchases—or with staying upright; call (64-6) 879-8735 for details.

Central Otago, at the southern end of the South Island, is New Zealand's fastest-growing wine area—mostly producing Pinots and Rieslings. The Gibbston Valley vineyard sells nearly half of its acclaimed Pinot Noirs to some 125,000 tourists a year, many of whom come to the tasting rooms on day excursions from the nearby adventure sports capital Queenstown. Visitors can tour the vineyard and the cool, concrete-lined cave where wine sits in racked barrels before sitting down to lunch in a shady outdoor restaurant.

Soft-spoken former journalist Alan Brady founded the vineyard in 1987 but soon tired of the endless promoting and tourism. He moved down the road to start again, this time in search of the perfect Pinot Noir. "I really wanted to get back to the reality of wine," he says, his nose deep in a glass of his latest vintage, "which for me is getting tired and dirty at harvest time." He takes a sip and smiles. "Now I am not driven by any market demands—I am producing the wine I want to and the market seems to like it." His new vineyard, Mount Edward, tel: (64-3) 442-6113, is only open to those with an appointment and a strong interest in Pinot Noir. If you're lucky you'll catch the winemaker thinking out loud as he tries to solve the puzzles of his precious Pinot's responses to soil and climate—an alchemist in search of liquid gold.