ALTERNATIVE WHITES
BLANC SLATE OR LEADING LIGHT? JOELLE THOMSON
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ew Zealand may be at the cutting edge of Sauvignon Blanc production and second only to France in terms of plantings, but this country has other strong strings to its white wine bow, which it could also champion, so why aren’t we? “Talk to any Marlborough winemaker and they’ll tell you they’d like to have a go with white grapes which aren’t Sauvignon Blanc, but it’s pretty hard to sidestep Sauvi-
gnon Blanc right now,” says Marlborough winemaker and white wine champion Simon Waghorn. Like many in Marlborough, Waghorn’s reliance on Sauvignon Blanc boils down to market demand but even then it is important to branch out. The self-professed Sauvignon Blanc fan is well placed to talk about alternative white grapes, having long been a champion of many luscious alternatives to mainstream Sauvignon Blancs and
also to grapes which are relative unknowns in New Zealand. Waghorn’s latest Chenin Blanc is a case in point. A full bodied expression of the classic French Loire Valley speciality, Waghorn’s Astrolabe
“It always mystifies me that people put their hands up for what I regard to be lesser European varieties that don’t have the nobility of lineage that Chenin has or as much to offer for the consumer who wants to age a wine.” – Simon Waghorn
Wrekin Chenin Blanc is so zingy, fresh and different for New Zealand that it begs the question: why is New Zealand so strongly reliant on a single white grape? When he began winemaking life a couple of decades ago in Gisborne, Waghorn says he used to make a lot of wine from Chenin Blanc; most of which found its way
Simon Waghorn
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NZ WINEGROWER FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013
into bag in box wines. He could see the potential to do something far more noble with Chenin than put it into a plastic bag in a three litre box. “I don’t think enough people
have given it a fair crack on the right sites, apart from the obvious likes of James Millton and Gordon Russell, who have been great champions of it over the years. If you do it right, it’s alongside Riesling as the best aging white variety we have and I think it’s probably the most versatile of the whites we could possibly do,” says Waghorn.
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