Millton Gisborne Te Arai Vineyard Chenin Blanc 2006

Today it’s a wine I actually drank some time ago, but am only just now writing it up.  Alas, when you drink more quickly than you write, it’s difficult to keep up, but I’ve slowed down slightly on the drinking front and hope to clear out the backlog before the end of the year.  So without further delay, I give you the Millton Gisborne Te Arai Vineyard Chenin Blanc 2006.

My wife and I have been together for long enough that when we sit down at a restaurant and are looking through the menu I can tell what she will order even before she has decided.  Her tastes are fairly consistent and there’s usually something that I know she’ll go for.  She can typically do the same in terms of knowing what I’ll drink, and if she spotted this on a wine list she would pick it for me right away.  The combination of an under appreciated classic Old World grape in a New World terroir draws me in more often than not.

This is not the first varietal Chenin Blanc we’ve seen, nor even the first from a New World producer, but the Kilikanoon Brut Vouvray was something of a trick – a holiday wine essentially, made by an Australian while visiting France.  A quick recap of the grape is probably worthwhile.  Chenin Blanc is a white grape with its Old World roots in the Loire Valley, most famously in Vouvray where it is made into sparkling wine, dry wine and sweet wine, all depending on the vintage.  It was at one time the biggest white grape of South Africa, and it can be found planted throughout the rest of New World.  It requires a long growing season to fully ripen, but it rewards warm climates by retaining its acidity when other grapes become flabby.  It’s also one of the few white wines that really improves with cellaring – Chenin Blanc can develop complexity over years or decades in bottle.

Gisborne is a new region to this blog, situated in the eastern peninsula of the North Island of New Zealand, roughly in the middle.  It is situated on a flat, fertile river valley, with loam being the dominant soil type.  The climate for New Zealand as a whole is often described as maritime, with mild winters and cool summer.  Gisborne in particular has low heat summation, and most grapes grown are cool climate white varieties.

The region initially rose to prominence in the 1960s-1970s for the production of vast quantities of bulk wine, much of it slightly sweet and made of German varieties such as Müller-Thurgau.  When the area was struck in the 1980s by phylloxera it required replanting, and many growers took the opportunity to replace Müller-Thurgau with Chardonnay at the same time they were replacing their rootstock.  The area also diversified somewhat from exclusively bulk production with smaller, often high quality, wineries carving out a niche.  The ratio of grape growers to wineries remains high.

Millton Vineyards & Winery was founded in 1984 by James and Annie Millton around Manutuke where Annie’s family had been involved in grape growing since the 1960s.  The couple had spent the preceding years learning the trade in France and Germany before returning home to replant much of the family holdings and establish the winery.  They became New Zealand’s first certified organic winery in 1986 and then were one of the first to qualify for certification as biodynamic.  (I expressed my thoughts on biodynamic practices when I wrote about Marchand & Burch.)

Millton specializes in single vineyard varietal wines of their own estate.  They have three lines of wines, their namesake, Clos de Ste. Anne and Crazy by Nature, and have plantings of Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Muscat, Viognier, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Pinot Noir and Merlot.  In addition to varietals of those grapes, they produce a Muscat Mistell, a sparkling Muscat, and organic grape juice.

In the glass this wine is clear and bright, with a medium gold colour, and slow, thick legs when swirled.  On the nose it’s clean and developing, with medium intensity and notes of green apple, quince, some lemon, and a bit of honey.  On the palate it’s dry, with high acidity, full flavour intensity, medium plus body, medium minus alcohol, but a medium minus length.  There are notes of quince, sour apple, a little black pepper, and some struck match.

This is a good wine.  While it’s interesting on the nose, it comes on very strong on the palate with exceptional acidity and intensity.  The flavour profile, while clearly Chenin Blanc, has some elements that are a bit out of the ordinary, particularly the sour notes.  I would have gone for very good except that it’s a bit short, something I find surprising given its strong attack.

Kilikanoon Brut Vouvray 2009

The past few weeks have been pretty heavy on Australian wine, but I’m moving back to France with this post, covering the classic Loire appellation of Vouvray.  The thing is, it’s been invaded by Australians.  I put before you the Kilikanoon Brut Vouvray 2009.

This is yet another wine I picked up at the Adelaide Cellar Door Festival, and I must admit that when I saw it a stand selling Vouvray, I initially assumed that it must be someone playing a bit fast and loose with protected geographical names, as was once very common in Australia.  However, there are a good number of Australian producers who go overseas to make wine and then bring it back under their Australian label, with the Primo Estate of McLaren Vale’s Primo & Co line of Italian-made wines and Burgundian wines made by Marchand & Burch of Western Australia springing to mind.  And as it turns out, Kilikanoon of the Clare Valley do the same thing.

Vouvray is a region and a wine, the region being in the Loire to the east of Tours on the north side of the river, and the wine being made from Chenin Blanc.  The two are closely tied, more so even than say Burgundy where to know the grape you need ask red or white (and even then if you’re picky there are grapes other than Pinot Noir and Charodnnay).  While you can grow Arbois within AOC Vouvary, and there are other things grown outside the strict appellation system, if someone offers you a glass of Vouvray, you can expect it to be Chenin Blanc.  However, that’s as far as it goes.  Within the region, Chenin Blanc is used to make a wide range of styles, dry to sweet, still and sparkling, high quality and other.  But first, the particulars of the region.

Vouvray is within the broader Touraine region, which has a range of climatic influences, with Vouvray at the meeting point of cool continental and Atlantic-influenced maritime.  The soils are largely clay and gravel on the surface, though not far below is tuffeau, a soft rock which contains miles of tunnels used by winemakers for their cellars.  Tuffeau ranges from blanc which is calcareous with good drainage to jaune which is more sandy.

Vouvray is one of the regions in the world where the vintage determines the wine style.  In austere vintages, the grapes can go into sparkling wine, or dry styles.  With more ripeness, demi-sec, or off dry styles prevail.  With the appropriate conditions into the autumn, very high quality sweet wine cane be made, with multiple passes of hand picking.

And while Chenin Blanc may have found a second home in South Africa, and has been known to spend time in California and Australia, it is most often associated with the Loire, and Vouvray in particular.  Locally, it’s sometimes known as Pineau de la Loire.  It buds early and ripens late, which can make for some difficult vintages in the Loire.  It’s also rates very highly on the acid scale, even in warmer climates.  While these qualities make for some level of challenge in Vourvay, which they meet with a variety of winemaking styles for each vintage, in the New World Chenin Blanc has at times been something of a sure bet, capable of retaining high levels of acidity even when over cropped, and always ripening.  That said, there are some excellent New World Chenin Blancs, such as Ken Forrester’s The FMC from Stellenbosch and Coriole’s Optimist from McLaren Vale, both of which have similar ageing potential to high quality Vouvray.

Speaking of New World producers, Kilikanoon is certainly worth a mention, not least of all because this is their wine.  It’s a young company, founded by winemaker Kevin Mitchell in 1997, named for the property on which the brand was founded in the Clare Valley.  Over the past 15 years, the company has grown through buying up estate-owned vineyards and establishing a portfolio of over a dozen properties throughout South Australia.  Wines include Riesling, Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache out of Clare Valley, Shiraz, Grenache, Chardonnay and Semillon out of the Barossa Valley, Shiraz and Riesling out of Eden Valley, and Shiraz, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc out of McLaren Vale.

Not content with making wine in Australia, Kilikanoon has this partnership with Maison Greffe of Cave des Producteurs in Vouvray, as well as Cave de Tain in the northern Rhône where they have been producing Hermitage and Crozes-Hermitage since 2007.

This wine gave a big splash of bubbles when poured, but settled down to a fine bead that lasted through the entire glass.  It’s pale lemon in colour with some green highlights.  The nose is fairly robust, with green apple and lemon, as well as some pear.  The palate is dry, with nice mousse and zesty acidity.  The tastes match the aromas, with more green apple, lemon and pear.  Slightly short length with a pastry finish – not light patisserie, but more like pie crust, and I don’t mean that in a bad way.

I enjoyed this wine, though while they fruit is certainly apparent, particularly the green apple, it is certainly not sweet – almost austere, except for the pastry finish.  I think it has more to give with some time in cellar, and so I look forward to giving an older incarnation a try.  Length and complexity weren’t as generous as I might like, but it certainly made up for it by being crisp and clean.

While I will generally put a company headquarters on the map even if I know the vineyard is miles away or even on the other side of the country, I’m making an exception with this wine and putting the pin in the town of Vouvray instead of at the Kilikanoon home base in the Clare Valley.  I can live with a pin being in the wrong part of the country from where the wine actually originates, but I can’t live with it being in the wrong country.