Unlike many Old World countries that are restricted by laws that dictate the types of grapes they're allowed to grow and the wines they can produce from them, here in New Zealand we aren't tied to such rules, meaning we can have a crack at planting pretty much any variety we like in order to make new and interesting wines.
It wasn't long ago that I was geeking out over the first local versions of arneis, gruner veltliner, albarino, dolcetto, St Laurent and sauvignon gris. I thought marzemino was about as exotic as it got, until this week I took possession of a shiny new marsanne and a perfect little petit manseng.
It was on June 25, 2012 that I tasted my first petit manseng. It was a sweet, tangy tank sample produced from a little half-hectare plot up on Sam Weaver's "shin" vineyard at Churton, in Marlborough's Waihopai Valley. Eleven of Sam's vineyard blocks are named after cuts of meat, in homage I suppose to his cattle, which provide the manure for his biodynamic preparations. It also helps that on paper the vineyard looks remarkably like a side of beef. Exactly 15 months later, the finished wine arrived on my doorstep. Hailing from Jurancon in the southwest of France, it's a grape, Weaver says, that produces wine with a sense of mystery. "Without mystery, wine is an industrial product," he says. "Petit manseng has a mysterious quality that's difficult to put your finger on, yet it produces wine with assertive character, wonderful drive and length of flavour but also accessible fruitiness."
Apparently it's pronounced "petee man-sang", according to Sam's wife Mandy, who's already nicknamed it "the little man who sang".
Sam reckons it'll never be a mass-produced variety because it yields only about 50 per cent juice, compared to a grape like sauvignon blanc, which can yield more than 80 per cent. It's early flowering, vigorous and very late ripening. It's sensitive to powdery mildew but very resistant to botrytis.
