Wine: Quest for the best riesling

Imagine New Zealand without sauvignon blanc. Instead of vast vineyards, Marlborough's Wairau Plains would be a field of arid farms roamed by thirsty sheep. New Zealand wine exports would be almost non-existent.

This country's wine industry would contribute even less than its measly 0.2 per cent to the global wine bucket each year. And our winemakers might have stumbled upon the ability of riesling from Waipara and Central Otago to taste utterly fantastic a lot sooner than they have.

The quality of riesling from these two southern regions has always been good but now that quantities are growing, particularly from Waipara, there will be a lot more top tasting New Zealand riesling around.

Winemakers in these regions are making it so well that they are moving riesling beyond the realms of the predominant reigning style of confused sweet and sour flavours towards the sophisticated white wine that great riesling can be.

The biggest show of confidence in Waipara is by Allied Domecq, the country's biggest wine-making company, which has just started producing wine from its new 215ha Camshorn vineyard.

When the marketing people at Allied Domecq tell you that Waipara is the ninth largest wine region in the country, it is just another way of saying that it's almost the smallest. Only Waikato is smaller and that barely warrants a passing mention.

Waipara is to New Zealand what New Zealand is to the world; it makes a tiny amount of outstanding wine so that its reputation far outweighs production.

The new rieslings from Waipara are labelled Camshorn after the vineyard on which they are grown by the caffeine-addicted, golf-playing grape growers, Martin Tillard and Jason Doughty. The way these two passionate wine growers talk about Camshorn, anyone would think they own the place. They have been in Waipara since 1994 and 2000, respectively, and have worked on this vineyard since its inception. Which is part of the reason that their rieslings - one noticeably sweet, the other almost bone dry - taste so good.

Tillard and Doughty admit to frequently over-indulging with their wallets in buying a wide range of great rieslings from all over the world in their quest to taste, understand and make the best expression of this grape.

They are also tending a vineyard north of Camshorn at Omihi, which was once known for the famous Corbans Amberley Riesling and from which we can expect to see more good things, such as Daniel Schuster's exceptional (but small quantity) new rieslings from Omihi.

If you like or want to like riesling then check out anything with Waipara on the label. The range is growing - not only from Camshorn but under a vast number of other wine brands, too - and many are available in the supermarket as well as your specialist wine store.

As for Central Otago, the latest 2005 Peregrine Riesling is a stunner.