New Zealand
In what is the most exciting new wine region in the world today, Sauvignonblanc competes on equal terms with the very best that Sancerre and PouillyFume have to offer. It rarely drops to the periodical dismal depths of itsLoire counterparts in poor years; at the same time, it is significantlycheaper. The Chardonnay and Semillon wines are also first-rate.
this country's reputation has grown quickly. The first comprehensive tastingof New Zealand wines was in London in February 1982 cocooned inside theHigh Commissioner's penthouse suite perched on top of New Zealand House.The sun shone through its plate-glass windows and transformed a cold butcloudless British winter's day into a warm and sunny Pacific one. I wasin New Zealand before the first drop of wine touched my lips! MN' conceptof this country's wine had previously been limited to a Germanic-style off-dryor semi-sweet Muller-Thurgau and just two producers Cooks and Montana.
THE LIEBFRAUMILCH SYNDROME
In the mid-1970s when the "Lieb-boom" was in full swing the sharpmarketing men at Cooks and Montana quickly launched their Muller-Thurgauwines onto Britain's Liebfraumilch based market and explained that the grapewas the same one that dominated its "favorite" wine. They alsorevealed to a "Lieb-sick" wine press that it was a combinationof New Zealand's European type climate and its widespread practice of 'back-blending"that enabled it to produce wines of distinctly Germanic style. Back blending,we were told, is synonymous with the addition of sussreserve, blending backunfermented grape juice into a finished, fully-fermented, dry wine. Thisadds sugar, but the sweetness is disguised by the juice's freshness andhigh acidity, and is more readily perceived as tanginess and grapeyness,particularly, if the consumer is told this by the label. The sussreserveprocess is especially important in the production of German wines.