Kiwi red wine hype leaps off the blocks

By Rod Oram

Between the lines

Current events at Montana Wines and Corbans, the two largest wine makers in New Zealand, encapsulate the opportunities and frustrations facing this high-profile, but still small, export industry as it tries to mature and grow.

Montana launched, at the weekend, a cabernet sauvignon with which it hopes to stake out an international reputation for making a Bordeaux-style red wine. The project dates back more than a decade but it will be several more years yet before Montana can prove it can make such a sophisticated wine to a very high, consistent standard and in reasonable quantities.

If it succeeds, it will help broaden the New Zealand industry's reputation from the white wines which have put it on the world map. To do so is crucial as the industry, minuscule at only 0.2 per cent of world wine output, fights for space on retailers' shelves abroad. Moving upmarket is important as lower-cost, fast expanding producers such as Chile improve their quality.

It is disheartening that Montana and the industry is only now getting to this stage of their development. Fully 50 years have passed since Tom McDonald, the father of high quality red wines in New Zealand, made his first cabernet sauvignon at his Church Road winery outside Napier.

By 1965 he had perfected a wine which attracted international acclaim but he could not capitalise on it because of the unsophisticated nature of our wine industry at the time. Run by brewers for consumers who were still stuck on fortified or cheap table wines, the industry was to stagger on through years of corporate upheaval before it was capable of reaping its first international success with sauvignon blanc.

Montana, like many other winemakers, were hampered through that period by a lack of capital and good management which resulted in wildly fluctuating fortunes. As part of its recovery, it bought the then-defunct McDonald winery in 1989 and has invested heavily in upgrading it and local vineyards.

A string of good wines have come out of the investment but the real test comes now with the new cabernet. With an eye to Tom McDonald's cabernet sauvignon success 35 years ago, it has called the new wine "Tom", taking branding and hype to new levels for the New Zealand wine industry.

Meanwhile, Corbans, the second largest producer after Montana, faces an uncertain future. It is owned by a brewer, DB, which in turn is controlled by the most international and intensely focused brewer in the world, Heineken.

The brewers will reveal shortly whether they will keep Corbans, founded by Alex Corban, the father of New Zealand white wines, or sell it off. But it is a shame that such a prime asset is in limbo just when the industry needs to harness all its scarce resources to secure its future.