Cool grape is a hot vineyard favourite

Pinot noir is New Zealand's most planted red grape variety. In 1998, it graduated from second place to number one, displacing cabernet sauvignon as king of New Zealand reds.

Where cabernet sauvignon and merlot struggle to ripen in New Zealand's cool, highly variable climate, pinot noir is more reliable. And every second winemaker is pushing out at least two, often three or four, different versions and lowering their prices each year to tempt wine drinkers.

Which is why even Hawkes Bay's best known cabernet sauvignon producer has created a pinot noir.

Te Mata Estate stands out from the crowd by reversing the ratio of white to red wine. Where the country as a whole creates about 70 per cent white wine and 30 per cent red wine, Te Mata is the opposite.

It's with cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot that Te Mata has made its name, rather than pinot noir. Not that the owners - the Buck family and winemaker Peter Cowley - are opposed to stepping outside of their comfort zone.

Last year they made their first pinot noir from their coolest vineyard, inland at Woodthorpe in Hawkes Bay.

They were torn about whether to sell it in New Zealand or make it an export-only wine.

In January 2005, British and United States wine buyers visited them at the same time, tried the wine, liked it and bought half each. That was the end of the small trial run they had produced.

Then the 2004 Te Mata Woodthorpe Pinot Noir was highly rated in the British wine magazine, Decanter.

And now the Buck family and winemaker Cowley are in a quandary again. Nicholas Buck, the second-generation marketing director at the winery, sees the pinot noir as very good but not, in his own words, at the top of the heap.

It may be unusual for a New Zealand winery not to have a pinot noir available both for local and export markets, says Buck. But rather than try to categorise Te Mata as a cabernet sauvignon-only winery or try to make a pinot noir that knocks the socks off all others in Hawkes Bay, he says he would rather stay at the exploration phase with pinot noir.

It was exploration that also led Te Mata Estate to trial viognier, to make a chardonnay (Elston) that tastes better after two or three years than it did when first released and to make one of the best sauvignon blancs in the country.

If you're tiring of New Zealand sauvignon blanc, try out Te Mata Cape Crest and get back to me.