New Zealand

New Zealand wine regions

Greystone Wines in North Canterbury.

New Zealand, the world’s southernmost wine-producing country and one of its most isolated, has a reputation for quality that belies its comparatively short winemaking history. Although it produces just one per cent of the world’s total wine by volume, wines from this island nation, in particular its sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and pinot noir, are in global demand.

New Zealand has 10 main wine regions. The North Island is home to Northland, Auckland, Gisborne, Hawke’s Bay and Wairarapa, and the South Island includes Nelson, Marlborough, North Canterbury, Waitaki Valley and Central Otago. Other, smaller or lesser-known regions are also recognised, including Waikato and Bay of Plenty, which lies south of Auckland on the North Island, and Ōhau, on the North Island’s west coast. On the South Island, Bannockburn is both a subregion of Central Otago, and an official Geographical Indication (GI) in its own right.

The country’s wine industry is young by global standards, and despite several attempts by missionaries and other settlers (including James Busby who made New Zealand’s first recorded wine in 1840) to plant vines as early as 1819, farming and other agricultural industries took precedence. After an outbreak of phylloxera in the 1940s, most of the country’s remaining vitis vinifera were pulled out in favour of hardier Euro-American hybrid vines and weren’t restored until around the 1960s. 

Trinity Hill in Hawkes Bay.

Between 1960 and 1980, total vineyard plantings in New Zealand went from 400 hectares to 5600 hectares, over a third of which were in the newly established Marlborough region. Today, Marlborough is home to 71 per cent of the country’s almost 42,000 hectares of productive vineyards, although only around 163 (or 22 per cent) of its 740-odd wineries – contract grape growing is big business, particularly in Marlborough.

As well as producing most of its wine, it was Marlborough that first put New Zealand on the international wine map. In 1985, just 10 years after sauvignon blanc was first planted in the region, Cloudy Bay released a wine that perfectly captured the intense tropical and irreplicable flavours that Marlborough sauvignon blanc would become known for, catapulting the grape, the region and the country onto a global stage.

Sauvignon blanc remains the country’s most important variety, producing 77 per cent of its total wine by volume (and making up 86 per cent of its exports), although other white grapes including chardonnay and aromatics such as pinot gris, riesling and gewürztraminer are grown and made all over the country. Pinot noir is now the dominant red, even though it accounts for just seven per cent of the country’s total production. Other red varieties grown include cabernet sauvignon, merlot and, increasingly, syrah.

Wines from New Zealand are typically elegant and powerful, with intense flavours and crisp, bracing acidity. This is the result of long ripening seasons, caused by the combination of sunny days and cool nights common in many of the wine regions, plus a distinct maritime influence (all of New Zealand’s wine regions are within 130 kilometres of the ocean). The one exception to the latter is Central Otago, which is the only region in the country considered to be continental thanks to its surrounding mountain ranges. Still, while there are some similarities in wine style, there is a lot of regional and subregional variation due to a dramatic diversity in climate and soil types across New Zealand’s 1600 kilometres of wine country.