Hawke’s Bay and the North Island reds

Hawke’s Bay has been growing grapes since Marist missionaries planted at Mission Estate in the 1850s, making it the country’s oldest continuously producing region. It’s also the warmest region that matters, which means it can do the thing the rest of New Zealand can’t: ripen Cabernet Sauvignon.

In 1867 a flood shifted the course of the Ngaruroro river, exposing a bed of deep greywacke gravel. For a century it was considered worthless land - too stony to farm, quarried for road metal. In the 1980s growers realised that stony, heat retaining, free draining ground is exactly what late ripening red varieties want.

The Gimblett Gravels appellation, roughly 800 hectares, is defined by the soil map rather than by property lines or a political boundary - the edge of the appellation is the edge of the gravel. That’s unusual anywhere in the world, and closer to how Bordeaux actually behaves than how it’s legally written.

The stones absorb heat during the day and release it overnight, adding the extra accumulated warmth that gets Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot ripe in a climate that would otherwise leave them green. Neighbouring Bridge Pa Triangle does much the same thing over red volcanic gravel.

• Bordeaux blends - Merlot-led more often than Cabernet-led, reflecting the cooler seasons. Structured, cedary, and increasingly age worthy.
• Syrah - the region’s strongest claim. Peppery, floral, medium bodied and much closer to Northern Rhône Syrah than to Australian Shiraz. Arguably New Zealand’s most underrated wine.
• Chardonnay - rich, textured, barrel fermented. Hawke’s Bay Chardonnay is world class and consistently undersold.

The Syrah deserves emphasis. Cool climate Syrah retains rotundone, the peppery compound, which warm regions burn off. Hawke’s Bay makes it at a fraction of Côte-Rôtie prices, and and it holds up to the comparison.

• Waiheke Island - a warm maritime microclimate in the Hauraki Gulf, making dense, expensive, genuinely good Bordeaux blends and Syrah. Small production, high prices, heavy tourism.
• Gisborne - the country’s Chardonnay heartland by volume, warm and fertile, historically a bulk region now with a serious quality tier. Also good Gewürztraminer.
• Auckland / Kumeu - small and damp, but Kumeu River makes Chardonnay that has repeatedly beaten white Burgundy in blind tastings.
• Wairarapa - covered in the previous chapter; Martinborough is its core.
• Northland - the warmest and wettest, tiny, experimenting with varieties nowhere else in the country can ripen.