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A new era for Ayrburn - and a top new Riesling

Nestled between Arrowtown and Queenstown, Ayrburn has entered a tasty new era, combining Central Otago’s farming heritage with its relatively new-found reputation as one of the world’s great cool climate wine regions. The estate is home to wine today but can trace its roots back to 1864, when Scottish settler William Paterson established the property and named it after his birthplace of Ayr, combining it with the Scottish word ‘burn’ for the creek that flows through the land.This we...

Vintage reflections: Hugh Crichton, 2024, Elephant Hill

It’s not every day - or year, as the case may be - that harvest unfolds under warm, dry weather conditions, allowing picking decisions to be based entirely on flavour development, phenolic ripeness, acidity and overall balance. But... here we go with the new 2024 releases beginning to pour out of wineries on New Zealand’s east coast regions and what a stellar vintage it is. Not to wax too lyrical but it was also a relief for both winemakers and wine drinkers that 2024 came along following tw...

Champion of Chardonnay - New from Neudorf

Chardonnay may have shrunk (just a tad, I might add) across New Zealand over the past year from 2,879 hectares planted nationwide in 2026 compared to 2,932 last year and 3,114 a decade ago, but winemakers' devotion to making great examples is far from cooling, If anything a slight retreat in plantings in this country has coincided with a sharpened focus to make great Chardonnays everywhere from Auckland to Central Otago. And in Nelson, which ranks seventh out of the 11 wine regions in this ...

Wine of the week - Affordable Ballasalla Pinot Noir

If you're reading this, you don't need me to reiterate the fact that Pinot Noir is a difficult customer when it growing it in a  vineyard to and make wine and sell it at a price that appeals to wine lovers and also makes a profit for the producer. But here it is: an affordable Pinot Noir. Of all the vineyards in Central Otago - and there are many - Folding Hill is one of of a handful (okay, a couple of handfuls) that really speak to the purist in me. It's a small vineyard site in Bendigo, ...

Wine of the week from Gimblett Gravels 17th Annual Vintage Selection

This year marks the 17th year of the Gimblett Gravels Annual Vintage Selection wines which were officially announced in August. I will post all of my independent reviews of the 12 wines here over coming weeks now that I have tasted through the selection, which features six Syrahs and six reds made from classic Bordeaux grape varieties, all from the 2024 vintage. This year's release wines were, as always, independently selected by Master of Wine Andrew Caillard every year. The 2024 is a...

Australian alternative white - Wine of the week

Talk about a surprise. Well, not exactly. Australia has been taking me by surprise this year for all the obvious reasons - it's warmer than New Zealand and it's bigger so it has more going on in some spheres, including when it comes to trialling lesser known wine styles made from European grapes that are not mainstream. Enter this wine of the week. It is the most vibrant Australian white wine I've tasted this year and has the fresh acidity that I've come to expect from New Zealand wines rather t...

Bragato spearheads new environment wine waste project

A new environmental project by the Bragato Research Institute in Marlborough could see thousands of tonnes of the region's winery waste turned into a valuable resource for vineyards through a new regional programme.The Institute is spear heading the Marlborough Circular Wine Programme which will see it collect winery lees, the sediment left over from winemaking, and combine it with materials such as compost and biochar to produce a safe, beneficial soil amendment. The initiative aims to reduce w...

Westwood Rosé release - dry, polished expression of Waiheke Island

2026 Soho Westwood Rosé RRP $32Westwood Rosé puts Waiheke Island’s freshest foot forward in this newly released 2026 wine, which comes to market in ideal time for spring. Light in colour, dry in taste and a flavoursome expression of Syrah and Merlot blended together, this wine delivers dried red fruit aromas, flavours of fresh watermelon and a twist of citrus on the finish which adds vibrancy to each flavoursome sip. The grapes in Westwood Rosé were grown on Soho’s Onetangi Vineyard on Wa...

Keeping it in the (Hawke's Bay) family

Four homes in nine years is a lot for anyone, even more so when it involves wine tanks, barrels and infrastructure but now Radburnd Wines has a permanent new home at one of Hawke’s Bay’s most meaningful winery sites - the former Stonecroft Winery.The announcement means that Hawke’s Bay wineries are creating a legacy in the country’s relatively short wine history with Kate Radburnd’s formal news this week that she has purchased Stonecroft Winery premises from Fistonich Family Vineyards....

Finest foot forward for 2024 in Aotearoa

Is it really 25 years since Craggy Range harvested its first grapes and made its first vintage? The official release of the winery's Prestige Collection wines this week on 1 September, marks the 25th vintage for Craggy Range. It's an auspicious release for the winery any way you look at it because this family owned wine brand has the best vintage of the past four years to mark as its 25th year - and 2024 was an exceptional vintage. Volumes were lower than usual and quality was significantly high...

Thought provoking wine of the week from a thoughtful producer - Two Paddocks Dry Riesling

Here in Western Australia on a family visit, it’s refreshingly warm, the ocean is crystal clear and the sand feels like velvet underfoot following a brutally chilly winter in New Zealand. So it would be natural to expect a wine of the week that reflects this country but here goes with a pristine wine that drinks well in this climate. More to come on Western Australia and the greatness of its wines, which have been keeping my palate refreshed and interested.In the meantime... my wine of the wee...

Twenty years in the making

If Pinot Noir seems to have risen from zero to hero over the past few decades, it has - almost - but it's not only volume that has grown, it's also diversity. This year, winemaker Helen Masters marks her 20th vintage at Ata Rangi with the release of (among other wines) four Pinot Noirs from a year that was excellent for quality and a massive relief for winemakers following challenging years in 2022 and 2023. The latter proved to be so challenging that Masters didn't make the flagship Ata Rangi P...

Will Michelin bring a long term boost to wine sales and hospitality?

As timing goes, the inaugural Michelin Guide New Zealand 2026 awards could barely have been better. Like almost every industry across the motu right now, it's been tough for wine. There are many factors coinciding to place pressure on wine at a time when its quality has never been better. Two of those pressures are rising costs of living and rising unemployment figures across Aotearoa. The arrival of the Michelin Guide to this country has been met with cynicism in some quarters but it's als...

The Pinot files - Blue Earth

Pinot Noir is the most significant red grape variety in New Zealand with 75% of the country's 6,804 hectares of reds, the vast majority of which are planted in the South Island. The most important North Island region for Pinot Noir is the Wairarapa but since there's a plethora of regions beginning with 'Wai' (don't get me started), let's focus for now on Martinborough, the heart of this high quality, often wind-beaten wine region.The wines have been impressive from day one in the late 1980s but ...

Diving into Albariño

Is Albariño poised to become the next big thing in Aotearoa New Zealand?“It’s tempting to plant a lot of it, but I’m suggesting caution, even though it does well all along the east coast of New Zealand. It’s such a good variety for our climate conditions,” says Marlborough winemaker Simon Waghorn, co-founder and co-owner of Astrolabe Wines with his partner, Jane. We - a group of wine judges, associate judges, winemakers and writers - were listening to his wise words of caution wh...

Two faces of southern Pinot - new Gris and Noir

Pinot is more than one thing, as I was reminded last week when a friend asked what I'd like to drink when visiting a neighbourhood bar and then duly arrived back with a glass of Pinot Gris. I had wanted a 'Noir' and we swapped it out easily as another friend is a devotee of Gris. Here are two new Pinots from the deep south of New Zealand and the world. Both wines are pretty widely available and very good+ in quality. Worth beating a path to, perhaps especially the 'Gris' because for a grape...

Altitude meets attitude at Central's Coal Pit Wines

When many New Zealanders are enjoying the sun on Greek beaches, Spanish cities or London streets, winemakers in the deep south are releasing new wines during the coldest months of winter. By 'deep south', I am referring to Central Otago - one of the southernmost wine regions in the world. This week's trio of new releases comes from a small producer with a high quality focus - Coal Pit Wines.The winery and home vineyard are tucked away at the top of a dramatic driveway in Gibbston Valley, Central...

Fermentation in French oak weaves its textural magic

Marlborough is famous for white wine but generally not for Rhone Valley white grapes or wine styles. Enter Brave Roots Wine and Viognier. As New Zealand wine brands go, this one is pretty new. Brave Roots Wine began its journey in 2023 when founders Alina Tenetka and Masha Skorchenko started making wine, releasing their first commercial wines in March 2025.This month, the duo behind Brave Roots has released the 2025 Brave Roots Viognier, using Marlborough grapes and creating a wine tha...

When a big vintage is still small - Pinot Noir in a cool climate

When winemaker Paul Mason says the 2025 vintage will go down as one of the biggest and earliest harvests on record, he's drawing on over 20 years of experience in one of the coolest parts of a cool climate wine region - the south end of Te Muna Valley in Martinborough, in the Wairarapa wine region. The entire region is home to 1,166 hectares of producing vines. Pinot Noir makes up 493.97 of these hectares* and is considered the flagship variety in the region. Today, Paul is the full ti...

A common thread at world's biggest wine awards (for Aotearoa)

It was a relative rarity for New Zealand Pinot Noir to take top spot at big global wine awards a decade ago. This year, it is almost a dead set regularity, as the world’s biggest wine competition showed in June this year, awarding eight platinum medals to New Zealand wines, four of them for Pinot Noir.The competition is the 2026 Decanter World Wine Awards, which showcases the strength and diversity of the world's wines as well as the power of Pinot from New Zealand's cool‑climate regions.&nb...

New Soho Stella Sauvignon Blanc review

2026 Soho Stella Sauvignon Blanc RRP $26.9918.5/20From the first swirl, Stella Sauvignon Blanc asserts its aromatic presence with ripe grapefruit, passionfruit and blackcurrant leaf unfolding into lifted lemongrass and freshly picked herbs held together in a tight, bright young wine.Made with grapes grown in the Awatere and Wairau valleys in Marlborough, Stella was fermented entirely in stainless steel to retain its vibrant freshness and youthful energy. Residual sugar of 2.9 grams per litre put...

Authentic expressions of place - New Zealand Chardonnay

It's not often I start a wine story in the first person but I've been working on a State of the Nation style story about Chardonnay for a couple of months now and the story seems to have taken on a life of its own, evolving into a larger story than originally planned. Watch this space for more to come. In the meantime, Chardonnay continues to be impressive in New Zealand, both for the range of styles made and the ever increasing focus by winemakers on purity and quality - rather than winema...

Pinot power at affordable prices

Pinot Noir is one of the world’s most notoriously difficult and expensive red grape varieties to grow, with only a handful of regions in the world producing top quality results on a consistent basis. Alsace, Burgundy, Central Otago, Germany Marlborough, Martinborough, North Canterbury, Oregon, Tasmania and parts of Victoria in South Australia can all make excellent expressions of Pinot Noir but the best tend to high priced, which makes affordable Pinot something of a rarity.The picture is slo...

Nectar by name and by taste

Wild mood swings, cool edges and fierce winds are the tip of the challenging iceberg that is the Wairarapa’s weather these days but despite the challenges, winemaker Jannine Rickards chose to make her home here for another reason – Pinot Noir – and her latest wine is an outstanding example.The wine brand she founded in 2017 is called Huntress, meaning she is now onto her ninth vintage and this week she released her latest.The Pawero Pinot Noir is my pick of the range (see my review, b...

Tale of two new Chardonnays

These two new Chardonnays landed on my tasting table this week, highlighting two very different styles from the cool nights and hot days of Marlborough to the moderate maritime climate of Waiheke Island. Here are my reviews. 2025 Soho Carter Vineyard Waiheke Island Chardonnay RRP $60Waiheke Island is a subtropical haven in the Hauraki Gulf with a moderate maritime climate and vineyards on which white grapes thrive. It’s also home to the vineyard that delivers the grapes giv...