When Coney Wines launched its first ever bubbly last month, I was reminded of a conversation with friends at a South Island winery about how hugely under rated, and relatively unknown, high quality sparkling wines are in New Zealand today. Despite this, the best sparkling wines made in this country put a strong case forward for the great suitability of New Zealand for producing some of the best bubbles on Earth.
“Sparkling has been on my mind for a long time,” says winemaker Lisa Coney, who launched the first commercially available Coney bubbly in June this year.
The wine is called Brillante and it has been a labour of love for over three years while it has aged on ‘tirage’, which is a French word that translates to mean the time a sparkling wine spends on its decomposing yeast lees in the bottle. Despite the sound of anything decomposing, this process adds incredible depth and richness of flavour to the best champagnes and, in their footsteps, great sparkling wines from elsewhere.
The volumes of the 2021 Coney Brillante are small and the price is relatively high at RRP $75 per bottle but the taste is, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty impressive.
Coney’s aim was to make a wine with structure and bright fruit flavours, which suggests an expression of a wine that reflects its relatively reliable climate of origin and is made using the same meticulous winemaking methods used in the Champagne region in France.
Those winemaking methods are collectively described as méthode traditionnelle. This is the traditional way of making sparkling wine in the Champagne region and further afield in typically cool climates, such as the northern Italian region of Lombardy, pockets of crisp cool weather areas in South Africa, Tasmania, Victoria in Australia and throughout New Zealand from Martinborough south.
The traditional method includes incremental winemaking steps such as an initial fermentation in oak barrels or stainless steel tanks followed by blending, finishing the winemaking process and then beginning it all again in heavy bottles with a little unfermented grape juice and carefully measured yeast, which induces a second fermentation. The wine is then left in the bottle following its second fermentation, during which the carbon dioxide from the ferment dissolves into the wine and the yeast lees release delicious, bakery-like aromas.
It's a complicated, complex and convoluted process but the results can be exceptional. The long winded process also explains why these types of wines cost a lot more than mass produced, light bodied, tank fermented bubblies such as Prosecco, but that’s another story.
The first Brillante is an excellent example of devotion to detail and a lot of TLC.
Wine of the week
2021 Coney Brillante Blanc de Blancs RRP $75
Brillante is a decadent, delicious wine with great depth and complexity and it’s made entirely from Chardonnay, hence the French term blanc de blanc, which translates to white of white. This crisp, fresh, creamy wine has pastry like flavours and a long finish.
It was made at Coney wines and disgorged in Hawke’s Bay by Méthode Services.
Available now at Coney Wines and online at www.coneywines.com
