If Michelangelo never picked up a paintbrush, he might have been a lousy accountant. If Einstein never took a physics class he could have ended up a mediocre electrician. But every so often, a lucky few end up in a time, a place, and a profession that allows them to resonate and reach their highest potential. Hans Herzog is one such person. He's a man of few words-- but he doesn't need them, anyway. His fluency is in wine.

I've never tasted a collection of wines that sing so perfectly in tune. The purity of grape variety comes through with astounding resonance. Hans attributes this to the clay soils on which he has planted. He uttered a rare sentence, "when you plant on limestone, you taste the limestone. When you plant on clay, you taste the grape." This view of winemaking runs almost contrary to terroirist approaches that see the grape as a conduit of the soil. Hans takes a different approach by looking for soils that will not overpower the attributes of the grape, so he can let the variety sing. This is a different kind of winemaking. 

When you taste the wines, the closest analogy I can think of is Gregorian chant. His wines are like tones ringing out in perfect pitch without instrumental accompaniment; whereas in other wines, the nuances of soils and techniques add layers of harmony upon the grape tone. The approach he takes could be considered risky, his ideas are very different to what most winemakers speak about when they talk soil... but when the wines are in a glass in front of you, you have no choice but to recognize them for the special songs that they are. 

Hans has more than a little experience-- his family has been making wines along the Rhone River since the 1600s. Hans' ancestors used almanacs when they ran their wine business in Switzerland, and these are unassumingly mounted on the walls of the cellar. How unexpected to find these threads to Switzerland's past so far away in Marlborough, New Zealand!

Hans' story begins with a break from tradition. He was the first in his recent lineage who chose not to take over the family winery. 

Hans and Therese met in 1984, and they planted some new vineyards near Zurich; still, he felt restricted by climate. In his travels he kept his eye out for perfect sites. Hans had passed through Marlborough back when there were only about 2 or 3 producers and had a dream of planting vineyards here. By 1994, their Swiss venture was successful, and there was no real need to keep looking. But Hans kept a deep interest in Marlborough. Therese was hesitant to leave her home and move, so Hans started vineyards in Marlborough as a 2nd project.  

"He knew exactly where he wanted to be: near the river," Therese narrates. When they purchased this land, it was the oldest apple orchard in Marlborough, along the banks of the Wairau River.

They commuted around the globe for several years, and after a while it became clear that Marlborough "is better than he ever dreamed it to be. And we decided to leave our successes in Switzerland to focus here." When they established themselves in Marlborough, the region was in the throes of the global sauvignon blanc boom that put New Zealand on the global wine map, but "Hans wanted to do something different." And he certainly has. With 28 grape varieties ranging from pinot noir to St. Laurent, Hans is showing the world another side of Marlborough. 

The winery is more than just a job for them. They live here and have a restaurant here... they've taken a few hectares of land and sculpted it into their own little utopia. 

 

In the cellar, in the restaurant, and in the vineyard, there is a sense that everything sits gently in its place. Even Hans and Therese fit neatly and comfortably in their environment. 

During the tasting, Hans stood in mid-discussion of a particular wine when a renegade cork rolled away from the pile of corks that had amassed in the center of the table. He noticed it, furrowed his brows at the cork, plucked it up, and placed it back in the neat pile. I imagine this is the way they have sculpted their environment into a beautiful hamlet-- piece by piece, they've created a tidy place for everything. In this pristine and cozy environment, there is a lasting calmness to their business, and you can taste this calmness in the wine. 

Even their dog fits neatly onto this step. 

Hans Herzog "Spirit of Marlborough" 
merlot cabernet (Marlborough)    
This wine was a real tear-jerker for me. One of those wines that makes you sort of wake up to what is happening at this winery. Therese mentions that "this is what Hans was motivated to do: make a great Bordeaux-style wine." 
The aromas are so savory, and when you taste the wine it is rich yet open, an aftertaste of what reminds me of roasted peppers lingers for the longest time. 

Hans Herzog Montepulciano 
Hans & Therese lovingly call this "Monti." 
This is an inky, full-bodied wine with persistent tannins that remind me of sagrantino. 

Hans Herzog sauvignon blanc 2010 (Marlborough)
This is not your average Marlborough sauvignon blanc. It is such a far cry from any other Marlborough sauvignon blancs-- or any other sauvignon blanc, period-- that it makes you wonder if you ever really thought you understood this variety to begin with. 
It smells like sun-dried habaneros and dried heirloom tomatoes, it tastes rich and savory, is perfectly balanced, has the most incredible texture and mouth-feel, and finishes with a dancing acidity. 

Hans Herzog viognier 2011 
(Marlborough, NZ)
After Therese first tasted Chateau Grillet, she begged Hans to make a viognier, and this is the result! These vines were planted in the mid-90s. 
The viognier is so purely viognier-- there is a cool, rich mid-palate with an almost oily texture balanced by an electrically vibrant acidity; and the aroma of viognier jumps out of the glass. 

Therese has problems with heavily sulphured wines, and Hans has issues with acidity, so these wines have very low sulphur and the acidity in them is of a soft and light kind. It's not the kind of acid that will melt the enamel off of your teeth; the acidity expresses itself in a more digestible way than you find in many other wines. "For us," Therese notes, "an outstanding wine should be a healthy wine." This philosophy really comes through in the pleasant drinkability of these wines. 

But above all, the varietal character that shines through in each bottle is astounding. If you want to understand a grape, pick a Hans Herzog wine and get to know it a little better. 

There is a wave of change washing over Martinborough, and Lance Redgwell of Cambridge Road Vineyard is surfing the crest. After crossing the globe working in vineyards, sailing, and building ships, Lance found his way back to New Zealand and settled in Martinborough to start making wines his own way. 

He clearly respects the history around him: Martinborough is the original hotbed of New Zealand pinot noir steeped in over 4o years of winemaking history. As one of the older regions in New Zealand, the quiet streets of Martinborough swirl in a mist of history, tales, and legends. The infamous Abel clone laid down roots here. The original properties of Ata Rangi and Dry River are close by. Over decades, vines have adapted to the local microclimates and viticulturalists have better data on rootstocks and clones than they once did. Lance's place includes some of the most historic blocks in New Zealand dating back to 1986. In fact, Martinborough as a region has just begun to settle out in global terms-- it's no longer a flurry of exciting vineyards going in with uncertainty. Though there is still plenty off room for exploration, today we can identify regional style and winemaking techniques, and clearly talk about what Martinborough wine is all about. But Lance didn't come to fit into this cookie-cutter vision of Martinborough. He's here to show us what else can be done on these terraces. 

Take, for example, his Petillant Naturel 2013, a blend of gruner veltliner, riesling, old sauvingon blanc vines, and pinot gris. In theory it may sound like an uncommon and unusual experiment, but in practice it works. The varieties enhance each other's characteristics, and the wine hits that unique and almost impossible benchmark of being both complex and simple: so complex you want to think about it, so simple you want to drink it. The wine finishes clean and fresh, and reminded me of dandelions, marigolds, and meyer lemon zest. 

Lance also makes a still white wine from the same must, finished with nothing but sterile filtration. So often when you have interesting variety combinations such as this, the wine doesn't come together. But here it does, and possibly because the varieties have all been co-fermented on wild yeasts. This is a great example of what can happen to the integrity of a wine when you relinquish a little control and co-ferment. 

Here's another interesting wine: "Weeping Tiger," a skin-contact, sparkling rendition of pinot gris, unfiltered, unsulphured. A few people are working with skin-contact pinot gris in New Zealand, and they all seem to be nailing it. This one was like nectarine skins and orange meringue. 

He hand-riddles both of these on his own pupitre. 

He's experimenting with a prototype spherical fermenter, and has just gotten in the region's first ceramic egg fermenter. I'm staying tuned to see what he makes from these.... 

True to Martinborough roots, Lance is also making great syrah and pinot noir; and here is where he gets most of his acclaim. This is also the part of his production that is most widely exported. 

He puts the focus on farming, "Vineyard managing is where I feel most comfortable," he says, and you can tell how his vineyard work brings more out of these grapes each year.

The pinot noirs have a unique personality to them, and after tasting across a few vintages I got some pretty incredible tasting notes, "fresh bark, nutmeg, raw beef hide, wildflowers, cacao nibs, fresh-cut cane;" there's a lot going on here that exceeds a standard pinot noir.  The syrahs are equally complex, elegant, and expressive, with intense flavors of meat, BBQ, soy, licorice, and black pepper. 

My personal favorite was this "Dovetail" field blend from 2010. It's a mix of syrah (29%) and pinot noir (71%), unfined, unfiltered, and barely any sulphur.

In fact, here in Martinborough, there is a unique dialogue between pinot noir and syrah. It seems almost counterintuitive to plant these varieties together-- they are often separated by distance and climate elsewhere in the world, and yet, this climate will fully ripen pinot noir and just ripen syrah. It's a place-- like Victoria, like Sonoma-- that can elegantly bring both of these grapes to bottle. Dovetail is a wine that embodies this unique and tenuous balance that exists in the space between these two varieties. 

The more "classic" wines from Cambridge Road (the pinot noir bottlings and the syrahs) are what you will mostly find in the US market, but I'm glad to know that there is a whole other layer of Martinborough to tap into.  

Lance is someone to keep your eye on. He has a way of honoring the past and producing beautiful region-specific wines, while also pushing the edges of possibility ever outward, driven by infectious curiosity. But more importantly, in the grand scheme of things, his unique way of doing things is clearly inspiring creativity and subtle change throughout the region. He is a catalyst for whatever the New Martinborough will become. 

<-- When these nets come off this year.... anything can happen. 

Martin and Anna Arndorfer 'Strasser Weinberga' grüner veltliner Kamptal Reserve 2012 (Austria)

The Kamptal, named for the Kamp River, has a fasinating history of gruner veltliner and riesling production. The Kamptal Reserves became official in the 2008 vintage and are rich and dry versions of the wines. They can be stunning, as in this Arndorfer grüner veltliner. It's interesting to watch this 'Reserve' idea play out in practice. The Reserves can be grüner veltliner or riesling, they have certain alcohol requirements (minimum 13% for dryness), and they must be expressive of their single vineyard sites. 

Martin and Anna are a young, vibrant couple, full of energy. They both grew up around Austrian vineyards and their parents' wineries. 

Arndorfer 'Strasser Weinberga' grüner veltliner Kamptal Reserve 2012 (Austria) 

Aromas of orange, mandarin, and grapefruit. This is a buoyant, happy wine that can speak on many different levels. 

In New Zealand, several producers are making very low- and no-sulphur wines (Seresin, Rippon, Alana, Cambridge Road, Pyramid Valley, etc.). These bottlings are usually sold at the cellar door or made for personal consumption, and many winemakers are still experimenting with them for export. Mike Weersing from Pyramid Valley notes that if you put a little CO2 into the wine to fill the ullage, it acts as a preservative as the wine travels. This is a common and accepted practice in many of the world's wine regions that are becoming famous for low/no-sulphur wines. But the difference in New Zealand is that the common closure is the screwcap, and in this environment, the CO2 will stay dissolved in the wine longer and do its job better on arduous global journeys. 

You see this quite often as a sommelier-- the lower-sulphur wines that I'll open will frequently have a small spritz at the beginning from CO2 preservative that has dissolved into the wine. I'll decant the wine until the spritz is gone, then serve it to the guest who ordered it. That CO2 spritz is sometimes mistaken for a fault, but a little extra effort from sommeliers and a little more consumer education could fix this. (Yes, sometimes you get wines that have undergone a secondary fermentation and are spritzy, but this type of spritz, in my experience, is usually much more intense than CO2 preservative spritz, plus re-fermented wines tend to taste out of balance because of the unexpected changes in alcohol and sugar content. But sometimes, you get an an unexpected surprise, like the riesling pictured left.). 

About corks and low-sulphur wines, Clive Dougall (Seresin) notes, "it seems counterintuitive to use an oxidative closure on a wine that is more vulnerable to oxidation." And he's right. If you set aside all cork vs. screw cap debates that center around issues of aesthetic and tradition, and consider it from a technical and practical point of view, the screw cap (and the crown cap for low-sulphur sparkling wines) has major potential for winemakers around the globe wishing to use less sulphur. 

I wonder if a regimen of CO2 injection + screwcaps on low/no-sulphur wines could make a difference in the world of natural wine. I absolutely love no-sulphur wines, but I am always crestfallen when I get a faulty bottle, which can be often. So many sommeliers and wine drinkers complain that natural wines have too many faults once they reach the consumer, because they just aren't built for global travel. Well, Clive has sent no-sulphur bottles (under screwcap) around the globe by ship and airplane, then had them returned to New Zealand. He's blind tasted these travel-trials against the same bottling that had never left the cellar, and he couldn't tell the difference. 

Might [screwcap + CO2] be a new paradigm for the more successful travel of low- and no- sulphur wines around the globe? There are many people working with it already, but if this idea was more widespread, it has potential to enhance the travelabilty of low-sulphur wines in a global market; especially in regions where winemakers tend to adhere to cork closures.  

Something truly special is happening at Bell Hill Vineyard in North Canterbury, New Zealand. You can feel it in the vineyards, sense it in the tasting room, and taste it in the glass. Everything on site from the vine posts to the floorboards resonates with a quiet sacredness that draws you in to a state of reflection. 

When you talk with winegrowers, most will tell you that "90% of the wine is made in the vineyard;" but at Bell Hill, this is clearly apparent and doesn't need to be stated. Husband and wife team Sherwyn Veldhuizen and Marcel Giesen have a clear and focused dedication to these vines; they talk about clones as if they are their children. 

Their high-density vines require meticulous hands-on management, and when you see the well-manicured vineyards, it looks as if a machine has tidied them up. But that "machine" is Sherwyn, and she combs through her rows with a precision that out-performs any piece of equipment. As Sherwyn led us through the vineyards, a pair of clippers sat taughtly poised in her hand, ready to snap if even a single vine tendril thought it could be vigorous that day and cautiously unfurl across our path. When a weed thought it could creep out over a stepping stone in front of us, she halted our caravan, grabbed the gangly and arrogant plant by the root and snipped it off. She has tamed these plants to focus solely on the task at hand: making concentrated and perfect fruit. If I were one of her vines, I'd be afraid to underperform or disappoint, and I'd give her my best grapes. 

The Bell Hill vines are trained low and nestled closely together, pitted in competition with one another for water and nutrients. The practically unfathomable vine densities range from 9,090 to 12,500 vines/hectare (compare this to the vineyard density of 3,000 vines per hectare which is usually used for maximizing yields and making mass-produced table wine).  With little option to lazily spread out, the roots are forced to go down. At such high densities, these vineyards are impossible to farm with machinery, and everything must be done by hand. 

They have no real opportunity to cover crop because outside plants would grow up to the low fruiting zone, shade it, and make it more difficult for winds to dry up mildew-risk zones. Without the option of cover-cropping, they plant oases of native plants to harbor insects that eat vine pests. Powdery mildew is a risk here. They have powerful nor'west winds which tear through the vines every so often and dry the bunches, but still, they take what some viticulturists would call extreme precautions against fungi. For instance, when Sherwyn and Marcel drop crop, they carry the discarded bunches out of the vineyard so mildew cannot breed or spread. 

Where did it all begin? 

They signed the papers for the land the day before their wedding, so Bell Hill Vineyard is, in a way, a portrait of their marriage. From this cottage they set out and planted their vineyards-- the first vines went down in 1997. Daringly, they planted their most difficult sites first. By getting the trials and defeats out of the way on the tough, smaller plots, they'd have more experience when it came to planting the larger blocks and could make more informed decisions when planting a larger amount of plants (and yet, there is not much difference between a "large" and "small" plot at Bell Hill, as their vineyard blocks range from .2-.45 hectares). Thus, Bell Hill has been forged in the hottest part of the fire-- intense focus goes on the vines at the fringe. 
 

There have been trials and tribulations on this journey. 
A Mosel-esque plot of steep riesling vines didn't make it. 
Sherwyn describes the experience with a sadness at the corners of her mouth, but she has plans to replant this section as a different variety. Of course she does: no obstacle can stop this woman. In several years when she does coax fruit from this hill, I'll be the first in line to try the wine. 

But for all the disappointments, there have been unexpected joys. They found a fossil deposit where a stream once ran through their land a millennium ago. Excavation revealed several bird species including many kinds of giant Moa. Long before grapevines were ever brought to New Zealand, birds larger than people would have roamed the Bell Hill Vineyard lands. The same thick and molasses-like mud that trapped these birds where they stood and secured their death now has vines tapping into it for life. 

As some of the first people to plant on limestone soils in New Zealand, when they first sought vines there were not many clonal options available to them in the nurseries, and the material wasn't adapted to the high pH levels in their unique soils. Marcel is finding that as New Zealand's wine industry grows, the quality and variety of rootstocks available to them is getting better and better, and he notes that "there is a lot of fine tuning that can happen in terms of the rootstocks you choose."

They faced the same uncertainty with scion clones on their unique plot, but they've approached clones with an open mind. "To categorically disregard a clone is difficult until you try it on your own land," Marcel explains.    

When it comes to making the wine, they are on the same page. Sherwyn notes that "we've got similar palates, so we don't argue that much about style." But when the fruit they are working with is so carefully farmed, "the wine is bigger than what you do to it," she says wisely.   

Sherwyn and Marcel are growing some of the world's most exciting pinot noir and chardonnay. 

The chardonnay is whole cluster pressed in a hydraulic basket press, fermented on indigenous yeasts, allowed to go through full malolactic fermentation (because the high acid balances out the malic perception), and are aged in mostly old barrels. The result is a nervy, compact chardonnay with an introspective concentration that reveals the impeccable vineyard management. 

The pinot noir is harvested/fermented separately by block, de-stemmed, spends about a moon-cycle on skins, then a year in new French oak. It sits in a tank before bottling about ten months later. Quantities are extremely limited-- you can read the bottle production on each label. The Bell Hill red wines result in rich pinot noirs, perfectly ripe flavors, and soft, soft tannins. The aromas are so complex, and the acid feels so balanced when you drink it. 

You can read more detailed tasting notes here. 

Wines from this type of viticulture don't come cheap-- it probably takes more ounces of sweat and tears to bring each bottle to market than the drops of liquid found inside. In the hardest years, Sherwyn and Marcel have coaxed a few hundred cases from their vines. Now, they have built up to a production of about 1,000 cases/year. These wines are expensive and rare; but if you find a bottle, consider yourself lucky, because you are drinking a wine that springs forth from the edge of what is possible in the vineyard. 

Bell Hill wines are on another level. The sum is greater than the parts. Like a Bach Partida or da Vinci painting, Sherwyn and Marcel have shepherded into being something that borders the holy byway of meticulous technique. They bring a sublime order to the chaos. 

New Zealand is famous for thriving bird populations- some native, others introduced by colonists over the last two centuries. These birds can decimate vineyards in a day if ripe fruit isn't netted. Wineries begin netting either just before veraison, or shortly after it has begun.

Last week, the South Island was just entering veraison and many vineyards sat exposed, or had just begun to net. In Martinborough (North Island) ripeness was a bit more apparent, red grapes had turned color and tasted sweet, and most vineyards had been netted.