Blackenbrook Vineyard

In today’s Nelson Mail, Alistair Paulin talks about the Nelson Aromatic Symposium, the search for a variety Nelson can call it’s own and the many passionate people working hard to make it happen.

Michael Brown, Chairman of Nelson WineArt says:

Nelson’s wine industry needed a calling card, and so around five years ago WineArt began marketing Nelson as the home of New Zealand’s finest aromatic wines.  [...]  The symposium is incredibly important.  It’s an opportunity for the region to attract some really important media and international winemakers who will take the story of Nelson aromatics to wherever they come from.

Daniel Schwarzenbach, the owner and winemaker of Tasman’s Blackenbrook Vineyard, is chairing the symposium’s tasting panel of gewurtztraminer, an honour he says he is “quite chuffed about” given how many excellent gewurtztraminers are made in Nelson.

He is a fan of the aromatics, saying his favourite to grow and work with is pinot gris, followed closely by gewurztraminer and then riesling.

But he prefers to call them the Alsatian varieties, as their traditional home has been in Alsace.

“I’m passionate about Alsace and the Alsatian people,” says the man who worked with Olivier Humbrecht – owner and winemaker of Domaine Zind-Humbrecht, regarded by many as the best winery in Alsace.

Mr Schwarzenbach speaks of how versatile gewurztraminer is, matching well with Asian flavours, or, as is done in Alsace, drunk cold with sauerkraut or spicy sausage.

As he sips his 2008 Nelson gewurztraminer at his gravity-fed winery on Baldwin Rd, he says he loves the “spicy, gingery, rose petal, lychee” flavours of the wine.

Read the entire article here.