If the screwcap fits…

Having become New Zealand’s leading wine award winner, Villa Maria aims to protect its achievements by sealing its entire range with Stelvin from the 2002 vintage

NO ONE COULD accuse Villa Maria of being staid.  The 100% New Zealand- and family-owned producer not only pioneered the concept of paying contract growers according to grape quality, but also became the first winery in New Zealand to set up specialist publicly owned vineyard companies.

Furthermore, the firm led the way in its home country using a three-tiered structure for its labelling, with "Reserve" saved for wines produced from the best grapes.  Then, more recently, it has sealed its bottles with Stelvin – and not just the odd Riesling, but all its wines from the 2002 vintage.

This was because George Fistonich, Villa Maria’s owner and managing director, believes all cork is "demonstrably flawed" and no longer wants to "play Russian Roulette" with the future quality of Villa Maria’s wines.

In fact, Fistonich feels strongly that "any wine company that rates wine quality as its prime objective, must embrace screwcaps as the only satisfactory closure at this point in time," and hence sealing the company’s entire range in Stelvin.

As he rationally comments: "I cannot see any logic in winemakers bottling their aromatic wines in screwcap, while still using cork for Chardonnay and red wines.  Bad corks destroy the flavour of all wines."

Nevertheless, the change has not been easy due to a certain amount of consumer resistance to screwcaps – especially when it comes to premium and red wines – although this is "time sensitive" according to Warren Adamson, Villa Maria European Manager, "and we’ve weathered the worst of the storm."

However, it’s not just Stelvin Villa Maria has a strongly held belief in.  The company also has high hopes for red wines from New Zealand and has been making Pinot Noir for over 10 years.

The producer even won last year’s Air New Zealand Champion Wine of the Show for the Villa Maria Reserve Pinot Noir 2001.  And as Adamson comments, "There is a lot of scope for Pinot Noir, we have a very good climate and we are learning how to harness it."

But there’s more to New Zealand reds than just Pinot Noir, and Villa Maria’s Bordeaux blends from the Hawke’s Bay region have earned particular acclaim, winning myriad medals.

In fact, it is worth noting that Villa Maria is New Zealand’s leading wine award winner. Interestingly, the style of these wines is slightly different to their Old World counterparts according to Adamson.

"Bordeaux blends from New Zealand tend to be at the complexity end of the scale," he says. "They age gracefully and focus on delicate red fruit flavours not rich black ones.  Also you tend to get white rather than black pepper."

The best of these wines come from a region in Hawke’s Bay called Gimblett Gravels of which Villa Maria has the largest vineyard holding.  The area provides the perfect growing conditions for Bordeaux red varieties as well as Syrah due to its stony, free-draining river soils and warmer and dryer growing seasons compared to more southerly districts.

"It is a fantastic small area," says Adamson, "and being two to three degrees warmer than surrounding vineyards the grapes ripen sooner.  We started planting there in 1998 and it consistently delivers the best Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and a little bit of Syrah." 

However, one of the keys to Villa Maria’s reliably good wines, whatever the price category, is the geographical spread of its vineyards, and aside from Hawke’s Bay it has sites in Marlborough, Auckland, where it’s currently building a new winery, and Gisbourne.

The company also operates a rather clever system to manage these areas which, as mentioned earlier, involved the development of specialist publicly owned vineyard  ompanies.

One of these is called Seddon Vineyards with an 84ha site in Marlborough, and was established in 1992 making it the first ever public vineyard company in New Zealand.  The other, known as Terra Vitae, was set up in 1998 and has vineyards in Hawke’s Bay and Marlborough – 142ha in total.

Villa Maria also has an extremely strong winemaking and viticultural team – "six of the best winemakers in New Zealand," according to Adamson.  This allows the company to have a viticultural representative in each major region and the ability to provide an advisory service for its growers.

And the combination of skilled winemakers and a large vineyard area in different districts  have dampened the effects of New Zealand’s rather small harvest this year.  As Philip Gregan, chief executive officer of winegrowers says: "Current reports from most areas, with the notable exceptions of Nelson and Central Otago, are that crops are significantly lower than originally expected.

As a result we now expect the vintage to be about 45% down on vintage 2002, at around 65,000 tonnes.  "It is clear that the spring frosts in eastern North and South Island areas, along with cool temperatures during flowering in some regions, combined to lower yields much more than had been predicted," he explains.

However, the full effects of this diminished harvest have been mitigated for Villa Maria by the high level of stocks from the  2002 vintage and also because the producer has vineyards spread across the regions, and the severity of the frosts were far from uniform.

Overall, it seems a pioneering spirit, prized vineyards and respected winemakers have ensured Villa Maria’s wines are of a consistent quality, whatever the vintage and not just at "Reserve" level.

In fact, it is Villa Maria’s aim to consistently improve the quality of every wine in each of its three tiers and such is the dedication to excellence Villa Maria is not only New Zealand’s most awarded winery but also one of the most respected by the wine press.

As James Halliday writes in his "Pocket Companion to Australian and New Zealand Wines": "Villa Maria has to be rated as New Zealand’s best large winery.  The quality of the wines, both red and white is exemplary, the flavours magnificently full, without going over the top."

• For more information on Villa Maria contact Hatch Mansfield on 01344 871800 or visit www.hatchmansfield.com