Pinot gris still a hot favourite

Picture / Carolyn Robertson

Ask any white wine drinker what they would like next time you're out having pizza, pasta or something posher and the answer is invariably pinot gris.

Whenever a white wine drinker deviates from this relatively new norm, it comes as a refreshing surprise.

"I have never tasted a pinot gris I liked, they all seem to be very sweet and I can't understand what all the fuss is about," said a friend at a pizzeria last month, adding quickly she really likes dry wine "so maybe it's just me".

She is not alone. Most New Zealand winemakers are as baffled as the rest of us fussy palates in the wine industry about why this grape variety and the wine made from it are so popular.

The latest national statistics reveal pinot gris is the seventh-most planted grape in the country, with 462ha grown nationwide - more than 20 times the amount planted in 1996.

Two years ago pinot gris occupied just 3 per cent of the country's national vineyard area but Philip Gregan, chief executive of New Zealand Winegrowers, forecast this percentage would increase as plantings continued to grow for the rest of this decade.

"We could bottle water and slap the label pinot gris on it and it'd still sell like hotcakes," said one Gisborne winemaker who, understandably, did not want to be named.

He added most of the winemakers he knew found the pinot gris phenomenon difficult to understand when they were producing more characterful tasting wines from chardonnay, gewurztraminer and sauvignon blanc grapes.

It is not that good pinot gris is impossible to find, but most of the New Zealand wine made from this white grape variety is so innocuous it needs to have a little residual sugar left in it, not just to enhance what little flavour there is, but also to add it.

Pinot gris is the best-known mutant grape variety of pinot noir, which mutates easily to other lesser-known varieties such as pinot blanc and a number of clonal variations.

It is known as pinot grigio in Italy, where it is usually vinified to be bone dry, but the best examples usually come from Alsace, France.

Top-tasting NZ pinot gris

Isabel Estate Pinot Gris, Kumeu River Pinot Gris, Lake Hayes Pinot Gris, Martinborough Vineyard Pinot Gris, Neudorf Moutere Pinot Gris, Quartz Reef Pinot Gris

From further afield

Few fans would dispute the greatest pinot gris comes from Alsace. Look in specialist wine stores or online for names such as Domaine Paul Blanck & Fils, Gisselbrecht & Fils, Hugel & Fils, Schlumberger, Trimbach and Domaine Zind-Humbrecht - all available here at specialist wine stores. Their style tastes vastly different to our expression of this grape.