In September 2014, as part of Auckland’s Wine and Food celebration, the New Zealand School of Food and Wine hosted three competitions to award excellence amongst professionals working with wine.
Waipara may have been suffering from one of the worst droughts in two decades, but it didn’t stop a foraging event that highlighted just how versatile the region is.
Until the 1980s, the low-alcohol German wine Muller Thurgau was popular internationally and in New Zealand, though wine experts maligned the Riesling-Madeleine Royale varietal as “bland”.
Phylloxera. The very word strikes fear into the heart of grape growers and winemakers everywhere from Bordeaux to Central Otago, where emaciated vines, yellowing leaves and declining productivity are of growing concern to those with phylloxera.