By Anto Coates
Brian Bicknell
began the tasting by lamenting one of the pitfalls of getting older. "One
minute people are talking about ‘promising young winemaker Brian Bicknell’ the
next minute they’re referring to ‘industry veteran Brian Bicknell…’” This type
of light-hearted self-deprecation allows Brian to get away with all the
jabs and irreverence that keep the atmosphere informal and fun.
Brian Bicknell is a
perfect ambassador for Marlborough, having
started Mahi at least partially in defiance against those commentators who
reckoned that the once-vaunted Marlborough
wines (read sauvignons) had become much of a boring muchness. 10 years on and
Brian is still hacking away at this straw man, making wild-fermented
single-vineyard wines that communicate their somewhereness with a precision
seldom found outside of the Cote d’Or.
From the amount of
time Brian spends talking about Burgundy,
it’s clear that’s where his heart lies. While he believes in the importance of
soil like the Burgundians, he has an impressive affinity for weather patterns
and believes they account for 80% of what ends up in your glass. And so it was to
a backdrop of hastily scribbled weather maps on the whiteboard that we tasted
the first flight of Sauvignon Blancs.
The first wine was
a Regional favourite, the Astrolabe Awatere Sauvignon Blanc 2009 (19.0+/20).
This wine is always a standout, showing a lovely rose-gold colour with typical
Awatere cool-climate red capsicum flavours on the nose, amidst an intriguing
aroma of Japanese-car-on-a-hot day (I came back at the end of the evening and it was still there). The palate was well
structured and long with vibrant tomato leaf acid rounding out a gorgeous sauvignon
blanc. The second wine was the iconic Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc decked out in
its 2010 finery (19.0/20). It had a nose of musky male cologne with
passionfruit and a hint of talc from the 4% barrel ferment component, and
correspondingly had more body and phenolic grip than its predecessor. A wine of
great purity, it toed the line between the classic Marlborough and the new experimental guise.
Wine number three was the standout for me: Bicknell’s own Mahi Boundary Farm
Sauvignon Blanc 2009 (19.5/20). Completely wild barrel fermented in 18% new
oak, it was a sensory revelation, displaying freshly baked sour dough aromas
dipped in herb infused brown meat gravy. While I was undoubtedly having a vivid
night aromatically, it also called to mind marmite and even coconut. Al
described it as being very ‘winey’ and Brian indicated he would tend to pair it
with less delicate white meats like poultry rather than seafood.
Flight two
contained the aromatics, and provided a look at Kevin Judd’s Greywacke Riesling
2009 (19.0-/20) with its lemonade, mandarin and apple/apricot strudel taste.
Gorgeously served on a tight acid plate this fruit platter is so beautifully
communicated I was able to correctly identify to the gram the residual sugar
(20). The next wine, the Huia Pinot Gris
2009 (17.0+/20) didn’t impress me as much as the last time I tried it, showing
wet wool on the nose and a little confection near the finish. Not sure whether
it was a tired bottle but the complexity I liked a week or two previous seemed
a little unfocused. The Mahi Boundary Gewurztraminer 2009 (18.5+/20) had a
lovely nose that again made me wonder why more people don’t drink
gewürztraminer. Even as I write this I can still taste and smell the essential
oils, roses and my great-grandmother’s house in Panmure (go figure). The palate
was a little dry for my liking but Brian indicated it was to promote a wine
that would necessitate another glass, which I can’t argue with.
The chardonnays in
flight three showed good variety and value with the Spy Valley Chardonnay
(18.5/20) supposedly there to represent the non-pimped-out variety but in
reality it had had the full treatment (oak, malo, lees stirring). Even so I found it a lovely understated wine:
a light, white yellow colour with a slight spritz to it and fresh lemon and
nougat taste.
By contrast the
heavily awarded Villa Maria Reserve Chardonnay 2006 (17.0/20) was to me a
monstrosity with enough butter and popcorn to tide you through a back-to-back
screening of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. When it won its gold medals perhaps
the acid was more evident to balance things out, but the wine certainly looked
broad and overdone on this particular evening.
Of course in saying this I’m aware there will be a huge number of
readers who will love this wine, so if you’re a butter lover, hook into it.
The third was the
Mahi Twin Valleys Chardonnay 2008 (18.5+/20), with a rose gold complexion and a
strangely haunting perfume. The palate dawned citrusy and fresh and carried
through to a very nice finish. It’s a wine that says enough without saying too
much and the one of the three I would be taking out to dinner.
The final flight was
the pinot noirs and the first wine from Dog Point. The Dog Point Pinot Noir 2008
(18.0+/20) was a ruby purple with deep, slightly over-enthusiastic
extraction and a bit of wood sticking out, but it certainly had some intriguing
complexity that came across as kind of an ocean saltiness. The Fromm
Brancott Pinot Noir 2006 (18.5-/20) was showing some bricking around the edges
with a red ruby centre, and again in a bolder, extracted style with lovely
forest floor and fungal aromas in keeping with the varietal. The final wine was again a triumph for Mahi
with the Rive Pinot Noir 2007 (19.0+/20). The wine was again red ruby with
slight bricking, but the nose was a class apart from the previous two and
perhaps the most individual wine of the night. Honey soy chicken, teriyaki and
mint jostled with the usual red fruit and the palate was elegant and long. A
gorgeous wine to finish the tasting and well worth getting your hands on while
you still can.