Pinot Noir has one of the most distinctive regional patterns of any variety (Figure 3). The most striking feature of the pattern is the importance of the three more recent wine regions as Pinot producers - Canterbury (including Waipara), Central Otago and Wairarapa. All have a larger area in Pinot Noir than Gisborne and a similar area to Hawke's Bay whereas in total area in vines these last two regions are much more important. Its regional evolution is quite different from the varieties that make up the New Zealand industry as a whole (Figure 4). Marlborough has the largest area in Pinot Noir in 2000 (as it does for the total area in vines) although we must remember that for most of the 1990s much of this substantial harvest of Marlborough-based Pinot has gone into méthode traditionnelle.


Since 1994, the industry has published the quantity going into méthode traditionnelle and still Pinot, although from 1998 the data is incomplete because not all companies are prepared to provide the information. The regional contrasts are striking (Figure 5). Three regions, Canterbury, Central Otago and Wairarapa put almost all of their grapes into still Pinot. The 20% of Central Otago's grapes that went into méthode traditionnelle in 1998 is probably an indication of the future as the enterprises there move to locally grown grapes for their méthode traditionnelle. Until 1997 almost all the grapes from Pinot Noir produced in Gisborne, Hawke's Bay and Marlborough went into méthode traditionnelle. Montana used Pinot Noir fruit from Gisborne to produce its first vintage of Lindauer in 1981. Since 1997, the beginnings of a shift to still wine have become apparent in Marlborough, and it seems likely that Hawke's Bay, like Gisborne, may partly replace Marlborough as a source of Pinot for sparkling wine.

The different end uses of Pinot Noir by region is clearly evident in their yields per hectare (Figure 6). Canterbury, Central Otago, Wairarapa have all recorded average yields during the 1990s of under 5 tonnes to the hectare. Their yields of wine per hectare are thus similar to the 35 hectolitres per hectare set for the Grand Crus vineyards of most of Burgundy, and for some seasons and localities are even lower. The low figures for Canterbury and Otago result partly from the youth of their vines. It is obvious from these yields that in all of these regions irrigation is being used to ensure balanced vines and steady growth to optimise the quality of fruit rather than to increase yields. In Gisborne, Hawke's Bay and Marlborough, yields are higher reflecting their importance for sparkling wine. But even in these regions yields per hectare for méthode traditionnelle are similar to those in Champagne. Marlborough's average yield of about 8 tonnes per hectare from 1992 to 1999 reflects the shift to still wine during the period, whilst the higher yields in Hawke's Bay and Gisborne reveal that their grapes are going mainly into sparkling wine.

What does this New Zealand story tell us about natural environments (terroir if we must) and Pinot Noir? I stress four main generalisations. First, in this country Pinot Noir will grow and produce fine still wines on a variety of soil types. Medal winning and highly esteemed Pinot Noirs have come from vines grown on soils ranging from clays to free-draining fluvio-glacial gravels and silts. In the prestigious regions of Wairarapa and Central Otago Pinot Noir is grown mainly on free-draining gravels, silts and sands. Much the same can be said of Canterbury, although there are some notable exceptions. This common physical characteristic of the soils should not be overemphasised. Soils of fluvio-glacial origins can be highly variable within relatively small distances. The soils across the regions vary greatly in parent material, and in their chemical composition. The variability in Central Otago's soils, especially between the schist-derived soils and the glacial and river-deposited silts, sands and gravels, is worth noting. In Marlborough, Pinot Noir is found on a variety of soils. Recently it has been planted in large areas on the southern side of the Wairau Plains where most soils have a high proportion of wind-blown fine glacial materials (loess) off the Wither Hills. Many of these require either specific drainage or ripping the subsoil at a depth of about a metre using a mole-plough-like implement behind a bulldozer - the same technique used to break in the Waitemata series of West Auckland. Pinot Noir is back on the clays.

Second, vignerons have been able to achieve high quality in the last 15 years because they now better understand canopy management and vine nutrition so that they can reasonably consistently achieve fruit of high quality. Low yields have been essential in achieving this quality. Obviously, the quality of the fruit will vary from season to season.

Thirdly, to this stage in New Zealand, climate has been more important than soils in ensuring wine quality for Pinot Noir. New Zealand is made for Pinot Noir (or is it the other way round?). Smart came to similar conclusions from a survey of Australian and New Zealand Pinot growers (Smart, 1992). While empirical experience has shown that only a few parts of New Zealand (notably Hawke's Bay) are able consistently to ripen Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir will ripen with good flavours and colours in many regions. The climates of the South Island and lower North Island regions where Pinot is concentrated have the following three features in common. They receive lower precipitation than many parts of the country (the 800mm annual precipitation iso-line has become almost an obsession for some Wairarapa growers). Second, they are at the cool end of the cool climate spectrum (using the mean temperature of the warmest month as the indicator). Third, these lower means are strongly influenced by their cooler night-time temperatures - their daily highs in the growing season are similar to other viticultural regions of New Zealand (the warmest sites in Hawke's Bay apart). These observations are made with considerable caution, and are subject to a host of qualifications, principal among which are those of scale and of comparative advantage. Within all regions the climate of the sites varies considerably (as it does at the level of the individual vineyard itself), especially when it comes to hazards such as late spring frosts. The grower must confront the implications of this variability for all possible alternatives and in the context of a suite of market considerations. Recognising and learning such local climatic variability has been especially important in the success of Central Otago.

This brings us to the fourth, and perhaps most important, generalisation. Such regional, and local, dispersal means that through the interplay between different climates and soils especially when coupled with different approaches to vinification we are seeing a variety of different Pinots from different parts of the country and even within the same region. Given its short history in New Zealand, there is still much to learn about the nuances of growing and making wine from Pinot Noir in different localities and in different seasons. Appreciable areas of Pinot Noir are present across a wider range of natural environments in New Zealand than any other red variety.

These last two points deserve some discussion. Over the last two decades of the twentieth century one can detect a fundamental difference in the attitude to the science of the vine (or rather where the effort has been directed in that science) between countries of the New World such as New Zealand and in some European countries, but especially France. From the mid 1980s plant scientists and viticulturists in New Zealand have put a huge effort into experimenting with and understanding canopy management across all of the varieties. Why did they do this? Because enterprises in the industry were trying to establish a quality industry and make better and better wine by growing better and better grapes. They had to know. By the time the area in Pinot Noir began to expand rapidly in the early 1990s this knowledge was almost taken for granted. A common vocabulary had been established, the general theory and practice were well known, and these principles could be applied to Pinot Noir. In contrast, in France, and especially in the prestige areas of Burgundy, Bordeaux and Champagne, vignerons knew they could grow good grapes because they had made fine wine for a long time. They had established their row spacing, particular methods of canopy arrangement, leaf-plucking and shoot thinning and trimming over centuries of empirical experience. They didn't need the same intensity of scientific work on the same themes. Indeed the appellation system often discouraged it. Apart from a few passionate individuals, scientific effort was directed elsewhere, and has only recently begun seriously on the links between soil, in particular and qualities of various products, although more effort is going into links between soils, forage plants and cheese than into wine.

All of this recent expansion comes at a time when the New Zealand wine industry has reached a certain level of maturity. It has demonstrated in the bottle and in the market place that it makes wine of quality to rival the best in the world. The industry is teaming with skilled and experienced winemakers and skilled (even though not so experienced) winemakers. These winemakers have learned the nuances of the different New Zealand environments well. Some of them like Rudi Bauer, Neil McCallum, Larry McKenna, Clive Paton, and others have about 20 years experience making Pinot either on the same site, in the same region or in various parts of New Zealand. Some have done several vintages in Burgundy. Many others (including some of the most admired) have had less direct experience with Pinot but have consistently shown their skill with other varieties. Having mastered those varieties at a refined level, since the mid 1990s they have been giving their attention to Pinot. And we have tasted the results from enterprises like Hunters, Kumeu River, Montana and Neudorf. The pool of grape growing and winemaking talent is constantly being renewed by young, well-trained and well-travelled young aficionados who are seeking the Pinot grail including exhaustive searches to insert themselves in their terroir. Alongside these smaller, often family, enterprises some medium sized and large enterprises like Montana have been putting huge effort into Pinot Noir. All of this makes the Pinot future look very rosy to me. We have the cool-climate sites. Now is the time to reveal and to develop further their own distinctive personalities.

People & their Regions in the New Zealand Expansion

The New Zealand wine industry is peopled with committed, skilled, and experienced individuals, passionate about vines and wine. Those growing and making Pinot Noir are at the high end of the passion scale. At the risk of making sins of omission let me try and capture the spirit of some who I have encountered in my interviews, and in doing so expose the colour and richness of the industry, and the diversity of approach to knowledge that forms the basis of terroir the human factor.

A colleague of the late Rolfe Mills of Rippon Vineyard on the shores of Lake Wanaka in Central Otago captures him as the 'Godfather of the Central Otago industry'. He paints an image of Rolfe planting every variety he could lay his hands on in his 1970s experimental nursery. Rolfe himself confirmed this image in an interview I conducted with him, chuckling, 'if MAF or anybody else said it wouldn't grow here, Warren, I'd plant a few vines'.

Another of the Central Otago pioneers, Verdun Burgess of Black Ridge Wines, travelled the country in the early days taking advice from the government research station and other growers. Yet, he also highlights the contribution of his orchardist neighbours whose knowledge of the properties of the local soils saved him from 'killing' them by applying superphosphate to the level suggested by soil tests. Over the years he has set about systematically altering the terroir of his property by ripping the soils and removing up to 27 tonnes of rock per acre. A carpenter by trade and thoroughly immersed in the culture of Kiwi ingenuity, he tells a tale in which sunburn up the insides of his legs from ice crystals on cold mornings led him to customise a rotary hoe and build spot mounds of soil under his vines to increase the reflected solar radiation.

By contrast, Neil McCallum of Dry River, a former research chemist, approached the problem of winemaking by going into a chemistry library and reading every research paper which had ever been published on winemaking. He adds that "...the other thing that helped was that we weren't near another winemaking area, so we didn't pick up bad ideas!" His scientific background remains important in his beliefs in low yields, his refusal to irrigate, and his use of materials under the vine to increase the temperature in the fruit zone. Yet his is in no way a dour scientific approach and he holds passionate convictions about the heavenly qualities of the Martinborough terrace.

Clive Paton of Ata Rangi, heads a family run enterprise and actively cultivates a family centred environment on his successful Martinborough estate, where he continues to develop the enterprise by experimenting and refining his viticulture. Down the road, in his Managing Director's Office Richard Riddiford manages a far more corporate, expanding 400 tonne winery for his co-investors in Palliser Estates, placing a greater emphasis for its development on marketing. Both have launched recent environmental initiatives, Palliser gaining ISO 14001 certification and Clive Paton planting shelter belts of hardy natives such as Totara, which he hopes will enhance the vineyard ecosystem.

Just out of town the other way, winemaker Larry McKenna has given up the vines from which he made a string of fine wines and enjoyed medal success at Martinborough Vineyard to start a new joint venture with his Australian partner in Escarpment Vineyard on Te Muna Road. Ever the brash and friendly front of the influential group of the Australian winemakers who have 'invaded' New Zealand over the past twenty years, Larry, a Shiraz disciple, was attracted to Martinborough by the challenge of Pinot Noir. As he tells the story, "I came down here at the end of 1985 to look at this job and I was shown a wine made from Pinot Noir out of barrels by amateurs that just blew me away. I mean it was wine like I'd never tasted in New Zealand and it wasn't Cabernet. I thought if these guys can make wine on an amateur basis out of Pinot Noir that tastes and looks like this ... whew, we're into this." His latest effort includes tripling the density of vines in part of the new vineyard to get closer to the Burgundian level of competition between the vines.

In Nelson, Herman Seifried, an Austrian initially recruited from South Africa to make cider for the former Apple and Pear Marketing Board, is planting Pinot Noir on the Brightwater gravels, alongside a former beer maker and a former Member of Parliament. We interviewed Herman as he was preparing to spend the night with the rest of his staff sticking back labels by hand onto a shipment of white varieties to Russia because the pre-cut labels in Cyrillic script would not fit in their labelling machine. Up in the Moutere hills, Tim Finn has added his fine Pinot Noirs to his internationally-renowned Chardonnay, having weathered the business and environmental challenges of a family wine-making enterprise on Neudorf Road that led at one point to establishing a bring your own food restaurant on his winery. At the other extreme, business people have invested in Pinot Noir at different times for reasons of tax advantage and image as much as financial return.

Not all the chapters of the Pinot Noir book are as colourful. The large companies have been more measured in their approach, particularly in Marlborough. National and Marlborough Viticulturist for Montana Wines, Tony Hoksbergen, recalls that he had always seen opportunities "to do Pinot Noir for red wine", but that Montana held back while the company developed its other wine styles, built up its plantings to satisfy the demand for Lindauer, and assembled the right mix of clones. He adds that "it wasn't probably until the time that we had good volumes of improved clones coming on stream that enabled us to meet, or better meet our sparkling wine requirements that we could embark on table wine". Other growers in Marlborough have also experimented methodically with all the variables and continue to do so, often in meticulous detail. Ivan Sutherland the experienced Cloudy Bay viticulturist and grower in his own right, is also going to closer spacing as he moves on to the hills with his new Pinot Noir plantings in Marlborough. He is having soil profiles bored at 20 metre intervals down each row so that he can better match root stocks to soil type and help manage vigour.

The people of the industry, their unique characters, their experience, their relationships with others, and their travails and successes in growing grapes and making wines in their particular environments have produced the industry we know today. These combinations of elements are configured in particular ways by particular features of particular regions, and have produced a national industry with distinct regional characteristics. We all know that each region has its own specific combination of physical and environmental characteristics, although some may forget that many of these characteristics are shared by the regions and that each region (or even vineyard) encompasses a variety of different combinations. We are still more inclined to overlook the human character of each of the Pinot Noir regions that derives from the people who developed its enterprises, the features of the wider wine industry, the timing of its development, the mix of enterprises and wines made there, and its relationship with the wider economy of that region. Again, the character and experiences of the industry protagonists reveal some of the flavour of these regions.

Moving from South to North, the experimentation, shared experiences and cooperative response of the Central Otago pioneers have left a legacy of collective knowledge and the impression of a distinct, cohesive wine region, despite being more dispersed internally than other regions. They have also given us many fine wines. It is difficult to argue that this legacy, built on the energies and creativity of Rolfe and Lois Mills of Rippon Vineyard (Wanaka), Ann Pinkney of Taramea, (Speargrass Flat) Alan Brady of Gibbston Valley, (Gibbston) Verdun Burgess and Sue Edwards of Black Ridge, (Earnscleugh Road) and the Grants of William Hill Vineyard (Alexandra) has not been instrumental in the success of the industry there. Working through the varieties, they finally demonstrated the potential of Pinot. Rippon and Gibbston Valley, in particular, were able to use this potential to attract well-qualified winemakers such as Rudi Bauer, who states that the experience made him determined to return to the region to start his own enterprise. Fortunately, the first five producers were well dispersed and their experience virtually defined the qualities of the natural environments of the different localities of Central Otago. As they developed they underwrote the region's development - buying grapes from new participants in new localities, disseminating their regional and locality knowledge, and encouraging cooperation. But the Central story is not that of an industry development just anywhere. The same physical beauty of the area that attracted and gave inspiration to the first five continues to give impetus to its development - attracting investors from business and film-making, from near and far alike, and tourists who buy the product and secure its images.

Canterbury remains an enigmatic starter in the Pinot Noir stakes. In the 1982 vintage, St Helena, with Danny Schuster, as winemaker, demonstrated its ability to produce fine Pinot ahead of the other regions. Yet Canterbury has not yet gone on to become the leading region suggested in that early promise, although individual producers have made fine Pinots. The answer lies in part in its dispersal. Canterbury really consists of a series of quite different, sometimes difficult environments in different localities across a large geographical area. These require much learning that cannot be passed easily from one locality to another. Its northern viticulturala has more in common with Marlborough than with central or southern Canterbury, or Banks Peninsula. Under early regional boundary determinations this northern part was actually included in Marlborough. With the large plantings announced for the upper part of the Waitaki Valley (the boundary of the Canterbury and Otago regions), the diversity of environmental conditions enclosed within the region will increase further. The extent of this dispersal is far greater than that of Central Otago, and has so far posed insurmountable barriers to the development of a regional community of vignerons or a regional image. The Waipara group of producers have addressed the issue by asserting their particular identity and challenging the appropriateness of the regional designation 'Canterbury'. The various challenges posed by its dispersal promise exciting times for the Canterbury region.

The Marlborough entry into Pinot Noir, although ultimately founded on Frank Yukich's fabled act of derring-do, has been more measured and studied. In the late 1980s and early 1990s journalists decried its inability to produce red wine, and asked questions of its climate and soils. Marlborough remained busy with the success of its Sauvignon Blanc and méthode traditionnelle. That has all changed very rapidly, although its 'terroir' has changed little! Montana waited judiciously, tending to its core business, watching others, considering clones and keeping a tight hold on its winemakers until it was ready to make the burst that its size and corporate strategies both required and made possible. In its Pinot Noir programme it now has enough Pinot vines of suitable clones in the ground to produce over 100,000 cases of Pinot in the early years of this century. Other enterprises, such as Cloudy Bay and Wither Hills, have made a similar careful entry into Pinot.

The Wairarapa had different origins as a Pinot Noir region, encouraged by and facilitated by the location within a town where small enterprises could set up. The town of Martinborough is dominated by wineries, and by family run enterprises in particular. Such density of wineries in a small rural New Zealand community has almost inevitably helped develop a distinctive image and style. Martinborough took up Pinot Noir quickly by comparison with the more experimental and varied development trajectories of other regions, and just as quickly became a producer of recognised quality. It has a scientific image borne of the involvement of key individuals - Derek Milne, the soil scientist with the then DSIR who conducted the original seminar and became associated with Martinborough Vineyards, Neil McCallum the research chemist, and the meticulous experimentation of Clive Paton of Ata Rangi. Its history is dominated by its proximity to Wellington and its large pool of educated, professional wine drinkers, who have adopted the town as their wine producer - buying its wines, filling its cafes on weekends, and supporting its elite winemaking image. Together with its early successes and the talents of its winemakers, this support has enabled the town to extract the best from its soils and to build a particular tradition. As the Gladstone locality reinforces its success and the large plantings on Dakin's Road come on stream (closer to Masterton than Martinborough) and demonstrate that potential sites are much more numerous than so far conceded, the Wairarapa (or is it Wellington?) wine region will undoubtedly change.

In Auckland, where arguably the Pinot Noir story began in the mid to late 1970s when Nick Nobilo produced some surprisingly good medal-winning Pinot Noirs that aged well from lesser clones, Pinot Noir has entered a new phase. Michael Brajkovich, one of the most respected winemakers in the country, pulled out his Cabernet Sauvignon and replanted in Pinot Noir. The accolades for his Pinot Noir, alongside his Chardonnays and Pinot Gris, demonstrates the versatility of the West Auckland clay-loams from the Waitemata series for an individual who knows how to handle canopy management and has sufficient experience of the site.

In Hawke's Bay, the story has yet to find a significant beginning. Growers and winemakers have committed themselves to the Bordeaux grapes and are working through their stances in the debate between clay and the bony soils of Gimblett Road. They ponder the influence on Pinot Noir of the region's restricted diurnal range, and watch Kumeu River with interest. Perhaps they too, like growers in Marlborough, will work through their more pressing concerns, secure their position to extract the rents available to them from their particular comparative advantage (as New Zealand's largest Bordeaux-blend region), and then turn to Pinot. For as a leading Marlborough producer reflects on Hawkes Bay's Pinot record - "perhaps they haven't tried hard enough yet".

The combined experience of growing Pinot Noir and making wine from it of the group of, for example, Central Otago wine growers is impressive by the standards of any Pinot region of the world. Many communes of the Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune would have difficulty matching such communal experience and technical ability. And the same can be said of similar groups in Martinborough/Wairarapa, or Canterbury, or increasingly Nelson and Marlborough. Fifteen years ago a country like New Zealand did not have the luxury of so many knowledgeable people in each region to support the industry and spread their knowledge and philosophy to the newcomers.

Conclusion

Great wines, like most things great, are never the result of a single influence. They are created by people understanding the milieu where they work and expressing its qualities in their product. The real Pinot Noir story, both in its primary European homes in Bourgogne and Champagne in France, and its extensions into New Zealand, Oregon, Washington, parts of Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia and other New World localities is a much more exciting one than any oversimplified association of climate and soils with wine. Every place, every site is different. We can't and shouldn't in my view be trying to replicate Bourgogne here in Aotearoa, New Zealand. We are pioneering our own styles in our own distinctive environments. The styles will develop rapidly as more Pinot Noir grapes from diverse clones come on stream, vine age increases, more people in the different regions have longer experience, and more talented people in small and large wine enterprises put their efforts into growing the grape and making wine of quality from it.

Most of us have an experience of a wine that opened our senses to just how sensory and sensational great Pinot Noir can be. Mine came through the courtesy of my brother-in-law. An electrician-friend of his here in New Zealand gave (yes, gave) him a bottle of 1947 Beaune 1er Cru, les Boucherottes that he had found while re-wiring a house in 1973. Neither Roger nor I, nor our wives, knew much about Burgundy at that time. With some apprehension at the way that it might have been cellared (sorry, stored) the four of us tasted it against two of the most reputable New World Pinot Noirs of the time. When I took the first mouthful of les Boucherottes I was dumbstruck. The wave of flavours that surged across the palates kept expanding and returning with new nuances. It was unbelievably complex, and delicate, and subtle, and rich, and long. Only later when I had Burgundian friends did I discover their reverence for that 1947 vintage, and for a range of reasons. It was a year and a wine to kneel for.

When I first visited Burgundy seriously in 1976, we drove, the first edition of Hugh Johnson's World Atlas of Wine in hand, southwest of Beaune through the narrow vineyard roads in the direction of the commune of Pommard to pay homage to the lieux-dit of les Boucherottes. Surprise, surprise, the land it occupies is almost flat. If wine that good comes from flat land I'll settle for the grapes grown and wine made from those Burgundy terroirs any day.

New Zealand, like Burgundy, will want to build its image on the basis of its natural terroirs. As Louis Latour recognises, the opportunity for such publicity is too seductive. But let's be careful not to lose sight of the people who have their gumboots in these terroirs and on the floors of the cellars. The soil exists but the terroir arrives when somebody makes an expressive wine from grapes grown in it. Without people and wine the word terroir would not exist.

Source: Warren Moran, The University of Auckland, 2000.