Championing NZ Pinot Noir

8 Oct 2010

Rudi Bauer — New Zealand’s Winemaker of the Year — of Quartz Reef Wine in Central Otago, is raising the bar for Pinot Noir. On the eve of a London masterclass he explains his winemaking philosophy to Anne Krebiehl.

You are the current chairman of Central Otago Pinot Noir (COPNL). Tell us about its objectives.

Our core responsibility and activity is to promote Central Otago Wine. We are active in New Zealand and Australia, and we run masterclasses in Hong Kong,Singapore and the UK. Every year we review where we should put our energy. We first came to London in 2003 with about 25 wineries [today there are 51], people were excited about what we were up to. We came back in 2006 and are planning to be back in London in 2011 . All the members organise a proper tour in the UK and we have events in Manchester, Bristol and Glasgow to get the word out that Central Otago is still on the move. We also do the Essential Pinot , where we invite opinion – formers from throughout the world and spend three days with them – it’s very successful. If you come to Central Otago you get the message.

What are you aiming to do at your forthcoming masterclass?

Jen Parr of Olssens, who is doing the master class on October 19 in London, will show a mini-vertical – so people can see what’s going on in Central Otago, to demonstrate vintage variation and ageability. Our average vine age is on the increase instead of stagnating. In the past there were so many new plantings that the average age was down, but now planting has peaked. You can now expect far more sophistication from Central Otago Pinot Noir as a whole.

What are future projects of COPNL?

The UK has always been a very important market for us and the idea is to come back here every three years. Maybe the focus will be on more grape varieties than just Pinot Noir . Pinot of course is still the forte. [There are producers of Chardonnay, Riesling, Gewürztraminer, one or two growers of Syrah and Viognier, some St Laurent and Grüner Veltliner].

You became New Zealand Winemaker of the Year 2010. Did that help you to promote COPNL?

It only had an indirect effect. I think the bigger media impact was the award in Germany because of the build-up [Bauer had been short-listed for Feinschmecker magazine’s Winemaker of the Year Rudi Bauer — New Zealand’s Winemaker of the Year — billed as the “Oscars of the wine world ”]. It did not happen, which was fine but on the same night I was voted NZ Winemaker of the Year [an accolade he also won in 1999], which helps Central Otago as a whole.

You are in a very illustrious group of people — Blair Walter of Felton Road, Jo Mills of Rippon and Matt Dicey of Mt Difficulty are your board colleagues. You are competitors, so do you work together?

Yes . Simply because we know that to promote Central Otago we need to pull together. We picked this up very early, because the common strength to the commitment in quality is much more powerful than that of any individual company.

Do you share know-how?

Yes we do. There is the Pinot Noir workshop where people get together from all over the country for four days. Behind closed doors they blind taste the wines and talk about them. That’s one of the key drivers of quality of New Zealand Pinot Noir as a whole. Within the region you always have something that you need to talk about, especially from a viticultural point of view. We have a group called Central Organics where we try to foster each other to go up to the next level of sustainability – organics and biodynamics are part of that. We try to achieve that for anybody who is interested. At Quartz Reef we started with biodynamics almost three years ago, we are now officially “in conversion” with Demeter and we’ve got two more years to go before we are certified. The one certified biodynamic winery we’ve got is Felton Road . We’ve got one Bio Gro winery – Kawarau Estate – and also Rippon Vineyard, very much at the forefront of biodynamics[without certification]. There is a very strong interest in organics and biodynamics in Central, as there is throughout New Zealand. That’s pretty cool.

What makes Central Otago different?

The key factor is the purity and clarity of fruit. That makes us very special.

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