KEY POINTS:
If you think I say uncharitable things about pinot gris, you should hear what some Australian winemakers have to say about it.
But every bland cloud has its silver lining and pinot gris, though often innocuous, has made wine drinkers realise that there is more to white wine than chardonnay, sauvignon blanc and riesling.
In 2007 Hawkes Bay winemaker John Hancock from Trinity Hill winery will have his first crop of the Italian grape, arneis, following which he plans to plant the Spanish white grape, albarinho.
Auckland's Coopers Creek winemaker Simon Nunns is also planting arneis and is keen to experiment with the Austrian grape, grunerveltliner.
And if you think these varieties sound unusual, consider Hancock's dream alternative white wine; a blend of roussanne, marsanne and viognier. The only reason he hasn't yet made any is that two of the three grapes needed to produce it are unavailable in New Zealand. It's only a matter of time before that changes and Hancock's dessert viognier is one of the best sweet Kiwi wines I've had this year.
David Hoskins, owner and winemaker at Heron's Flight winery in Matakana, produces high quality reds from Italian grapes sangiovese and dolcetto. Hoskins tasted his first Chianti in the early 1990s and it was such an epiphany that he went home and pulled out all of his cabernet sauvignon, replacing it with the two different Italian grapes he was able to source from viticulturist Joe Corban in West Auckland.
That was the end of 1993, and in 1998 Hoskins was finally able to release two different New Zealand wines made from these Italian grapes. There were, he says, clear quality differences between the two so he replanted part of his vineyard again with the grape referred to as montepulciano, adding dolcetto (another Italian red grape) at the same time.
If he's not happy with the flavours that the grapes develop then he doesn't make the flagship red but delineates it to Il Rosso - a lighter red that goes into older oak rather than new.
When the grapes are up to scratch, Hoskins produces a red from them that is labelled sangiovese and is undoubtedly New Zealand's best nod towards Italian red winemaking.
In comparison to Australia's diverse winemaking industry, New Zealand's is less adventurous, partly due to economies of scale. But there is increasing experimentation. And Hawkes Bay's Hancock and Warren Gibson of Trinity Hill are leading the pack with their montepulciano, tempranillo, touriga nacional (made into small amounts of a port-like fortified red) and, soon, their alternative white wines.
On a larger scale, Montana Wines (aka Pernod Ricard New Zealand) is playing around in some of its vineyards with viognier and, word has it, a smattering of other, lesser-known European white grapes.
As for what Australian winemakers say about pinot gris - the most repeatable comment was that making it is like painting with white paint on a white canvas.
