New Zealand in pictures: Central Otago

The second leg of the New Zealand trip took us to Central Otago, which knocked us out with its dramatic beauty. All craggy mountains and Listerine blue lakes, it’s easy to see why the winemakers here are so proud of their patch of land. This is the view of Lake Wakatipu from my hotel room. The longest lake in New Zealand, Wakatipu stretches 84 kilometres and is 400m deep. Its ‘S’ shape is said to resemble a sleeping giant.

While travelling from tasting to tasting on the coach, we were treated to stunning views out of the window. The wild beauty of Central Otago is perfectly encapsulated in the name for its biggest mountain range – the Remarkables, which runs directly north to south and lives up to its name, providing a dramatic backdrop for the icy blue waters of Lake Wakatipu. We drove for hours without seeing a single house.

A David to Marlborough’s Goliath, there are just under 2,000 hectares of vines planted in Central Otago, which accounts for just 5% of all wine produced in New Zealand. Pinot Noir is the jewel in the crown, accounting for 1,500 hectares in the region, which, aside from grapes, is known for its cherries. The six key sub regions of Central Otago are: Wanaka, Gibbston, Bannockburn, Alexandra, Bendigo and Cromwell.

Central Otago is the world’s southernmost wine region where frosts are common and silt soils are low in vigour but rich in minerals. The region is famous for its Gold Rush in the 1860s – the biggest in New Zealand’s history – which led to a rapid influx of foreign miners to the area, many of whom arrived from California and Australia. The rush started at Gabriel’s Guly but soon spread throughout much of Central Otago.

First to discover the gold was Australian prospector Gabriel Read. “At a place where a road crossed on a shallow bar I shovelled away about two and a half feet of gravel, arrived at a beautiful soft slate and saw the gold shining like the stars in Orion on a dark frosty night,” he said of the find.

During my visit I was lucky enough to catch up with the ever elegant, eloquent and erudite Sam Neill, who had recently returned to Otago after finishing four films back to back. The actor presides over Two Paddocks, which is the only estate in the region to own organic vineyards in Central Otago’s three key sub regions: Bannockburn, Gibbston and Alexandra. Sam keeps a menagerie of animals on his farm, including a yoga loving pig, a tribe of goats, a duck called Charlie, Susie the sheep and a singing magpie.

I also got to chat to Nigel Greening and Blair Walter, the founder and chief winemaker at biodynamic estate Felton Road. Greening splits his time between Central Otago and Devon. When in the UK, the estate is left in the capable hands of Walter, who, having chalked up experience in Oregon and Burgundy, adopts a hands off approach to winemaking, resulting in elegant wines of great depth that rival Grand Cru Burgundy.

During our whistle-stop tour of Central Otago we got to visit Burn Cottage, custodians of a 24-hectate estate set in the Pisa mountain range in Cromwell. Overseen by Ted Lemon of California wine brand Littoria, biodynamics is a religion here, and the results are turning heads – the Pinots, made by the super talented and wonderfully humble Claire Mulholland, are widely regarded as among the best in the region.

On a gorgeous summer morning, fizz was on the menu, as Akarua winemaker Andrew Keenleyside led through a tutored tasting of the traditional method sparklers in his range. With 130 hectares to work with, Akarua is the largest vineyard land owner in Central Otago. A fifth of its production is sparkling wine. The current offering includes a brut, rosé and vintage, all of which impressed with their elegance and balance. Keenleyside told db that he is planning on making a blanc de blancs as he’s a big fan of Taittinger’s prestige cuvée, Comtes de Champagne.

One of the highlights of the entire trip was an idyllic lunch under the maple trees at Maude Wines in Wanaka, run by affable husband and wife duo Dan and Sarah-Kate Dineen. The family estate vineyard, Mt Maude, was planted in 1994 on the steep north facing slopes of the sheltered Maungawera Valley, and is among the prettiest I visited.

Shaded by the maples, we dined on heavenly chicken liver parfait with hazelnuts, and duck in a Pinot Noir and cherry jus as each of the winemakers present told the stories of how their wines came to be. It was one of those perfect afternoons that you want to bottle and keep, and reminded me how lucky I am to do what I do.

Ending on a (sugar) high, for dessert SK treated us to cones of maple and walnut ice cream crafted from syrup from the estate’s maple trees.

And finally… hoping he might get lucky and score a fallen ice cream cone was Maude’s furry friend Beau, who lived up to his name.