A vintage performance

By Ric Oram

Auckland brothers Ross and Bill Spence this week released their 25th vintage of cabernet sauvignon - a grape variety that represents about 20 per cent of New Zealand's wine production, vineyards and exports.

Yet, until their first bottle in 1974, no sauvignon blanc had been made in this country. The joint managing directors of Matua Valley Wines are embarrassed to be called the fathers of this wine variety that proved to the world that New Zealand could produce high-class wines.

They planted the first sauvignon blanc vineyard in West Auckland in the late 1960s - "If we hadn't done it, someone would have," says Ross Spence - and, now, most of this country's 1800ha of sauvignon blanc vines can trace their ancestry to the brothers' original 6.5ha, which is still producing.

Sauvignon blanc cuttings were imported from California in the1960s by the Ministry of Agriculture. The first vine at the ministry's viticulture research station at Te Kauwhata did not survive leaf rot virus.

Ross Spence took cuttings in 1968 from MAF's second trial vine at a Corbans' vineyard in Kumeu before the ministry pulled it out. Those cuttings were the source of enough grafts for the brothers to plant their nearby Waimauku vineyard.

Ross Spence first came across sauvignon blanc during university wine-making studies in California. But the Spences could not sell what they made: "No one knew what it was [most of the French sauvignon blanc imported was labelled 'Sancerre' or 'Pouilly', after the regions it was produced in]. We didn't know how to sell it."

California's sauvignon blanc pioneer, Robert Mondavi, told the brothers during a visit to Auckland that he, too, had the same trouble - until he called it 'fume blanc'. "We called some of our production 'fume blanc', and that set sales alight." Montana and then Corbans went out to Waimauku and took cuttings. "Yes, we gave them away. As far as we were concerned, the more people who made and sold sauvignon blanc wine, the better for us."

Montana had bought more than 300ha in Marlborough and started planting varieties of grapes in 1973. The region was unproven and the company was therefore taking a giant financial risk. In fact, most of the first vines quickly died. The company's first sauvignon blanc went into 23ha in 1975, and it sold the first bottle in 1980. The region and its sauvignon blanc wine are now world-renown: more than a third, 3100ha, of the nation's vineyards are in the region and Montana now has 850ha there.