KEY POINTS:
When assessing the mix of elements in a wine, good judges invariably arrive at a final assessment based on the extent to which those elements are in balance. It's unfortunate this emphasis on balance is not always shared by people who write about wine, some of whom have been voluble on what's come to be known as the Wither Hills affair.
Wither Hills submitted samples of its Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2006 to a tasting conducted by Cuisine magazine, which awarded it five stars. Another bottle with the same label, bought at a supermarket, was found to be different on an experienced palate, differences were confirmed by chemical analysis and the boss and chief winemaker of Wither Hills, Brent Marris, confirmed the two wines were from different batches. Cuisine withdrew its five-star recognition and another national wine competition, the New Zealand International Wine Show, also withdrew a gold medal awarded to the wine.
Since then, news media have had a field day and some exaggerated and irrelevant comments have been made from wine industry practitioners and those who make their living writing about wine; many without regard for the balance they look for in wine or commend in its consumption.
The biggest losers in this affair have been wine consumers, the very people in whose interests the self-proclaimed whistleblowers profess to have acted. There is no excuse for placing on sale under the same label, two wines that have a significant difference. But the claim of at least one of the whistleblowers that the two wines are totally different is over the top and misleading.
Here's some information to help consumers make their own judgment (for ease of identification I use the batch numbers that can be found on the label: BR315 for the Cuisine sample and BR335 for the supermarket sample).
Results of analyses carried out by the Institute of Environmental Science and Research:
* Wine A, BR315 submitted by Cuisine:
Alcohol: 14.3 per cent by volume; total sugar: 3.7 grammes per litre(g/l); titratable acidity 7.5 g/l.
* Wine A, BR315 submitted by Wither Hills:
Alcohol: 14.2 per cent by volume; total sugar 3.9 g/l; titratable acidity 7.1 g/l.
* Wine B, BR335 submitted by Cuisine:
Alcohol 13.7 per cent by volume; total sugar 4.7 g/l; titratable acidity 7.3 g/l.
My deduction of these analyses: First, chemical analysis can't be quite the exact science we've been led to believe, given the different ESR readings from the same wine; second, the analytical differences between BR315 and BR335 tell us the supermarket wine is a little lower in alcohol and a little sweeter - certainly enough to be detectable to an experienced wine palate.
But what about that taste? For advice on that, I turned to the man I regard to have the best wine palate in the country, the most experienced wine judge and one whose tasting ability has been confirmed by attaining a Master of Wine: Bob Campbell MW, recognised in the Herald earlier this week as this country's leading wine educator.
Campbell was the chairman of judges at the New Zealand International Wine Show and he decided to withdraw the gold medal awarded to the BR315 batch on the grounds it had breached the show's condition that required judged samples be identical to wines in the marketplace.
This week, together with wine judge Sam Kim, a member of the original Cuisine tasting panel, Campbell has tasted both wines, in a blind triangular tasting, commonly used to evaluate and define differences in wine. Campbell said they had both correctly identified the sample from batch BR315 as the odd one out. His professional summary of each wine is as follows:
BR335: Pale, green-tinged. Citrus and passionfruit flavours - pure and focused. Fresh, clean wine with a soft texture, good length and showing a suggestion of residual sugar that perfectly balances the wine's fine acidity. In summary, a very good, perhaps benchmark of Marlborough sauvignon blanc. I would award it a high silver medal (90 points).
BR315: Pale, green-tinged. Curiously one sample appeared to have a slightly deeper colour than the other - perhaps due to a subliminal tint of colour in one glass. Slightly more pungent and more concentrated than BR335 with a suggestion of armpit character adding complexity (and an "X" factor in my view) to citrus and passionfruit flavours. A more complex wine than BR335 with slightly greater length and a similar texture and balance. Gold medal (93 points).
My interpretation of Campbell's summaries: Both excellent wines, slightly but certainly not totally different. Three points in 100 is not much of a difference but it does show how fine the line can be between gold medal and silver medal wines.
The other interests to suffer in this regrettable affair have been the wine industry and its organisation, New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW), the merged entity that brought together the wineries who comprise the Wine Institute of New Zealand and the contract grape growers who constitute the New Zealand Grape Growers Council. NZW has performed wonders in recent years in bringing the industry together, focusing on the need for unity of purpose and quality of product, and to promote that quality in major world markets. It has seen wine soar past half a billion dollars in export earnings, en route to a billion dollars in 2010.
Along the way, NZW successfully persuaded the Government to bring in the Wine Act, requiring winemakers to maintain best practice and to keep detailed and accurate records at every stage of the wine production cycle.
The fact that there were complete and detailed records at the Wither Hills winery available for examination by a qualified independent auditor appointed by NZW is confirmation the new regulatory regime works.
NZW has worked alongside the New Zealand Food Safety Authority to help introduce a set of winemaking regulations that are up with the most exacting in the world. It has also introduced and developed the Sustainable Winegrowing trademark, adopted by most vineyards and wineries as an indicator of traceable and audited green production practices. NZW was instrumental in having the Government enact the Geographical Indications (Wines & Spirits) Act to ensure the integrity of place names used to describe the provenance of local wine.
Brent Marris and Wither Hills have already paid a price for this unforgivable error of practice if not also of judgment. Let it not be used to taint the whole industry, whose continued success is as vital to its practitioners as it is to those who make their living commenting about its products.
* Terry Dunleavy is editor of the industry magazine, New Zealand WineGrower. He was the inaugural CEO of the Wine Institute, being made a fellow in 1996, and was awarded an MBE in 1990 for service to the wine industry.
