KEY POINTS:
If flying from Wellington to Blenheim in a small aircraft isn't taking my life in my hands, then spending a day tasting greenshell mussels with sauvignon blancs most definitely is.
It's easy to taste 63 sauvignon blancs when you can spit them out afterwards, but nibbling and swallowing bits of steamed, unflavoured, chopped up mussels is an entirely different matter.
The purpose of this culinary exercise was to find the ultimate sauvignon blanc to drink with greenshell mussels. It was the inaugural New Zealand Greenshell Icon Culinaire competition and five judges were charged with tracking down the best match.
The 2006 Astrolabe Awatere Sauvignon Blanc was our favourite.
The competition was the brainchild of Marlborough's Bill Floyd, whose inspiration was the parent competition, the Old Ebbitt Grill International Wines for Oysters Competition, which has been running for the past 11 years.
For eight of those, Marlborough sauvignon blancs have been caning nearly all other wines entered from around the world, although last year a Chilean sauvignon blanc won the supreme trophy.
But back to Marlborough. After the hair-raising flight, we began the day with a masterclass of wines served with fresh Bluff oysters. Among other wines, we tried two different 2006 Marlborough sauvignon blancs, a 2006 Marlborough riesling, Pol-Roger champagne, an over-oaked Californian fume blanc, an over-oaked Californian chardonnay, a very good 2004 pouilly fume, a green Hawkes Bay merlot and a tannic Kiwi pinot noir. Can't recall the region of origin of the latter, sorry.
But my favourite wine and oyster match was a toss up between a Spanish albarinho and a Marlborough sauvignon blanc.
The upshot, if you hadn't guessed already, was that Marlborough sauvignon blanc was the wine with the biggest wow factor when consumed with oysters.
One sip of 2006 Eradus Awatere Sauvignon Blanc and one bite of fresh Bluff oyster proved as explosive as any decent description of flavour will allow.
We then embarked on the troublesome business of tasting the 63 sauvignon blancs with mussels. The problem is oysters from Bluff taste better with Marlborough sauvignon blanc than the local mussels do. This flies in the opposite direction to the competition's stated aim of championing regional ingredients and flavours.
Floyd is open to directions in which to take the competition but when it was suggested that it become a showcase for Marlborough salmon, lamb and venison, some of us did suggest a simpler approach. I can only guess at the nightmare of tasting every one of several sauvignon blancs with a mouthful of mussel, then again with salmon, then lamb followed by a grand finale of venison.
As always with wine and food, it was balance that counted most. The wines that tasted green and acidic rendered the mussels earthy and metallic in taste; the wines that were fruity and modern often overpowered the mussels' flavour. The subtler sauvignon blancs, often from the Awatere Valley, flattered the mussels the most.
Marlborough sauvignon blanc is now clearly evolving in three tasty but distinctly divergent styles: fresh, minerally Awatere sauvignon blancs; fleshy, tropical fruit-tasting Wairau wines and fresh cut-grass, gooseberry styles.
I can't wait to taste the 2007 Marlborough sauvignon blancs as they begin to pour out of wineries' doors over the next couple of months, but if I see another greenlipped mussel this month it will be too soon. Bring on the Bluff oysters.
