Joelle Thomson

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New Wild Earth Pinot Gris, 20 November 2023

The words 2023 and vintage are never going to go down well in the North Island of New Zealand where Cyclone Gabrielle did her best to destroy the livelihoods, vineyards and passions of many winemakers, but it's a different story in the South Island where Pinot Gris does particularly well. Here is my review of a fresh new wine off the bottling line from Wild Earth in Central Otago. 18.5/202023 Wild Earth Pinot Gris RRP $31Pinot Gris from cool climates rocks when it's good, as this flavo...

In my wine glass this week

Sparkling wine, champagne, prosecco or simply bubbles (the pet hate word of some wine lovers I know, sorry guys). It goes by many names but sparkling wine is definitely one of my favourite drinks and ever since I have spent part of my working week at a large independent wine retailer in a multi faceted role, I have literally been able to indulge my champagne tastes with my, hmmm, more humble budget. Until this year. Not only are there fewer interesting quirky champagnes arriving on New Zealand's...

Marlborough expands exports with new investment

Treasury Wine Estates Ltd (TWE) announced today that it has acquired a substantial Marlborough vineyard to expand its landholdings in the region from 505 hectares to 750 hectares. This will increase the growth of Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir, particularly for exports markets with a strong focus on the United States. “The acquisition of the new vineyard, which includes its own water reservoir, is an important step in expanding our premium wine portfolio," says Treasury Wine Es...

New Zealand's 2023 white wines on market

It was an unspeakably difficult vintage in many parts of New Zealand this year but, thankfully, not bad at all for the country's biggest wine region, Marlborough, which is beginning to see the release of 2023 white wines. Two new wines from Saint Clair this week from 2023 are from areas that sound tricky. One of the wines is named Swamp Block after its low lying wetland vineyard site. It won a gold medal at the 2023 New Zealand International Wine Show. The other newcomer is part o...

New Zealand's newest bubbly brand launches

Jascha Oldham-Selak and Sanne Witteveen met in 2017 during their wine studies at the Eastern Institute of Technology in Hawke's Bay and have been together ever since, launching their first wine this month with Vilaura.The name comes from the words Villa and Aura, which the couple say translates to house of energy. It is a sparkling wine made in the traditional method, made entirely from Chardonnay grapes grown in Hawke's Bay and producing 4,500 bottles and 200 magnums. Witteveen studied a d...

Boxing on with new wave wine packaging

One year on and New Zealand's first bag in the box wine is not only going strong but has grown to 55% of online sales and to see the launch of a new bag in box wine, Dice by Dicey Rosé.The name Dicey makes for a convenient pun for the new take on an old type of packaging with the new bag in box wine designed to look like a dice. It is also a two litre bag in box rather than three litre package, which means it is consumed in a briefer timeframe, allowing the wine to retain freshness. From my own...

Sauvignon Blanc wins champion wine of show

To say that members of the Ibbotson family were thrilled this month at the Marlborough Wine Show is to make a major understatement. Not only did they win Champion Wine of the Show but it was for a Sauvignon Blanc, the region's most planted grape variety, this country's most exported wine and, frankly, a wine that is so well known that many New Zealanders do not take it seriously. Until a great example comes along. The 2021 Saint Clair Wairau Reserve has been rewarded as just such a win...

Wine and war... Wines of the week

War and wine have had a long and uncomfortable co-existence with France's most famous wine regions plundered during World War II and other regions, such as Alsace, having changed its borders from German to French at the end of World War I, along with Italy's Sudtirol (South Tyrol), which was part of Austria prior to World War 1, to name but a few of the many examples. The landscape is changing again, this time further east where things are looking  heartbreakingly unsettled. Despite which, ...

Gold in Folding Hill

Tim and Nikki Kerruish are relieved to be home. Their family holiday took an unexpected turn in 2020 when lockdown took place and they have spent the past three and a half years pining for their return to New Zealand and to their vineyard. This year they arrived back to the place they call home. It is Bendigo. One of the windiest, warmest and driest areas in Central Otago's far flung patchwork of vineyard regions. I have been to their off the grid home and it is an inspiring earth construction s...

People, places and opportunities in wine

Mora is the Latin word for linger and it's hard to imagine a better place to take time out than Central Otago with its jaw dropping mountainous beauty, let alone the wine. In this interview, Catherine Douglas shares her inspiration for Mora Wines and Artisan Kitchen, for which she works as the direct sales manager, driving targets, operating the cellar door and wine club.   What do you consider your greatest achievement?Most recently, it would be the part that my team and I played in l...

No 1 Family launches new sparkling wine

Marlborough is a long way from Champagne at the best of times but it must have felt like another world when Daniel le Brun first laid eyes on the dusty plains of New Zealand's biggest wine region in 1978. The weather appealed. The grape varieties not so much.Muller Thurgau was the leading grape variety grown in the region at the time, but Le Brun took the plunge anyway, making his first sparkling wine in Marlborough in 1980. This year, he and his partner in wine and life, Adele, and their a...

King of Chardonnay's new releases

Posted 30 October 2023To say that Chardonnay is on a global roll again is to make a wild understatement. It is the world’s most popular grape today, if plantings globally are any indication. And it has a long history of styles, which meet a confluence today of flinty, full bodied and creamy through to wines that take some of our palates back to Chardonnay’s heyday in the 1980s when bigger was better (from shoulder pads in clothing to flavours in wine). Back then, a Chardonnay wasn’t consid...

Wines of the week for three budgets

When there are so many people in the world without a drop of water to drink, it sometimes seems incredibly banal to be writing about a choice of wines to consume when the mood takes us, but life does not deal us all an equal hand, as we see with increasing alarm every time we switch on the news.With that very thought in mind, for those of us who are fortunate enough to live with a choice of what to drink, here are three wines that have impressed me over the past week in my life as a privileged i...

On the hunt for great Pinot

Winemakers are discovering the benefits of less invasive techniques to coax the best out of the grapes they use to make wine. In a growing trend that has been dubbed natural, low fi and non interventionist winemaking, many winemakers are no longer routinely adding sulphur to freshly picked grapes, during stages of winemaking and even, sometimes, at bottling. Commercial yeasts are now often eschewed, in favour of native yeasts in the environment and many wines are now bottled unfined and unfilter...

Change of guard as Craggy Range appoints new chief winemaker

Craggy Range Winery has announced a new chief winemaker today with the promotion of Ben Tombs, who will take over from Julian Richards as head of the winery team. "When we first hired Ben, we did so with the vision that he would one day take the reins from Julian. Ben understands what we are trying to achieve; he is uncompromising in his pursuit of quality and understands our two great estates in Martinborough and Hawke's Bay," says Terry Peabody, Craggy Range founder. Tombs' journey in wine has...

Hawke's Bay's impressive 2020s and 2021s

Posted on 4 October 2023Hawke’s Bay has had an impressive number of devastating natural disasters, of which Cyclone Gabrielle earlier this year is the tip of the iceberg. The 1931 earthquake flattened much of Napier city, ensuring the rebuild created one of the world’s leading art deco cities, and there is regular rainfall and, surprisingly, even frost conditions in this diverse wine region. The 2023 vintage is far from ready for bottling yet but while we wait, there are wines from the outst...

Merlot that kicks ass

Of all the hackneyed expressions and well worn cliches, the term 'kicks ass' is hardly inventive  but here is a wine that really does put light bodied reds in perspective. I am suitably surprised by the power of this red, which features in a long line up being tasted and written about today.Merlot. It was the gateway soft, light and easy to enjoy smooth red wine back when Cabernet could not seem to fully ripen in New Zealand. And while Cabernet may still struggle on occasion to ripen, it do...

Wines of the week - new bubblies

Daniel and Adele Le Brun weren't messing around when they named their wine brand No 1 Family Estate. If it sounds like a lofty ambition to aim for the top, it only needs to be taken in context, which is that Daniel Le Brun comes from a family with 12 generations of winemaking in the Champagne region in France. He brings a lot of wine wisdom to this relatively youthful wine country, not to mention centuries of experience that he learnt while growing up. Not that every single wine produced at No 1...

The greatest global wine book's fifth edition

Great books are a subjective matter but there's no doubt that this one earns its place on the top shelf of all wine lovers. It is the long awaited fifth edition of The Oxford Companion to Wine.The 944 page tome was edited by a trio of respected wine writers, Julia Harding MW, Jancis Robinson OBE MW and Tara Thomas, as opposed to the first edition, which was released in 1994 and edited entirely by Jancis Robinson MW. It was no mean feat when the first edition was released, which was described va...

TK breaks new ground in Martinborough

One of New Zealand's most remote wine villages is having a new lease of life. Martinborough is a 90 minute drive from the windy capital city and its hospitality offerings have evolved in both subtle and ground breaking ways over the past four years, in tandem with growing visitor numbers. The new Runholder eatery, wine cellar and gin distillery is the newest on the restaurant horizon in this small village. Situated on the edge of the compact village, it breaks new ground in design with maje...

Wine of the week - best of Central's Pinot bunch

If Central Otago Pinot Noirs seem incredibly prolific, that's because Central is the southernmost wine region on Earth and its winemakers are devoted almost entirely to the cool-climate-loving Pinot grape variety. Pinot Noir occupies over 80 per cent of the region's disparate and highly varied terrain. Vineyards stretch from the western most, windy enclave of Lake Wanaka down to the arid moonscape like rocky soils of Alexandra, with the famous Bendigo, Bannockburn, Cromwell and Gibbston Valley w...

An expression of place... Rapaura Rohe reviews

Three new Sauvignon Blancs show how the influence of climate, proximity to the sea and free draining soils can create vastly different tastes in wines that are made from the same grape variety and the same broader region, in this case, Marlborough.This trio of Sauvignon Blancs are the Rohe collection from Rapaura Springs Wines in Marlborough. Rohe is the Maori word for territory and is a name used to pay homage both to Maori culture and land in New Zealand and also to the wine concept of place, ...

Defiant in name and in life, a toast to John McGrath

This week, the Wellington hospitality scene and the world lost a great friend, brother, son, lover of life and author, John McGrath. He loved wine and he especially loved aromatic white wines, so here is a toast to the man that many of us called Five Star McGrath. He will be missed by many and his life will be celebrated on Saturday 2 September. Here's to you, John.WIne of the week2021 Domain Road The Water Race RieslingRRP $27www.domainroad.co.nzCool sorbet, hot day and promising flavours of li...

How high can you go on a bottle of wine? $175, anyone?

What is the most expensive thing you have eaten consumed? And did you see the value in it?The most expensive wines are often such labours of love that they do not even make it to the commercial bottling line, but remain either in barrel or in a small bottle run for family and friends of the producer. It is always a privilege to try wines such as those, which happens infrequently but regularly enough to be a reminder that the best winemakers love creating something special, even if it doesn't alw...

Two different takes on Central Otago Pinot Noir

To be awarded best in the world is a tall order in any industry, let alone the world of Pinot Noir, which reveres Burgundy but generally holds that all other regions of the wine world can't quite hold a torch to it, but there are a growing number of wine regions that are home to extremely good Pinot Noir today. Central Otago is one of them. One of its wines took out the title of best in the world when the 2006 vintage of Wild Earth Pinot Noir was awarded the Trophy for Best Red Wine and Champion...