Oz Clarke Q&A

Answering questions during his choir's cycling tour of the English countryside, Oz discusses his upcoming visit to New Zealand and warns against siren songs.

Right now you're biking and singing your way to Somerset. Tell us about Armonica and the Encore appeal.

We sing and cycle to raise money for Dementia Care. We cycle 50-60 miles a day and sing concerts in Dementia Care Homes along the route. It's always hilly - and decent pubs along the way always benefit. It's harrowing and exhausting but so worthwhile. Doctors say there is no drug as effective as music. We bring joy. We bring hope. We bring memories - and memories of music are almost always related to youth, to happiness, to times when the world was there to enjoy and anything was possible. So different from the current reality for so many of these people. People who haven't talked for a month start singing the songs from My Fair Lady - word perfect. People who haven't moved for two months clamber out of their chairs and start dancing with the nurses. We are raising funds to put a Memory Choir into care homes 52 weeks, 365 days a year including - maybe especially - Christmas Day. And we're nearly there. Buttocks and thighs still aching, and thirst as strong as ever.

From choral charity to wine wisdom, you'll be in Aotearoa soon, for the New Zealand Winegrowers Business Forum. If you could get one message across to New Zealand wine companies, what would it be?

Don't copy. Don't compromise. Don't dumb down and chase a mass market much better suited to other producing countries. Remember who you are - the coolest, greenest, purest, most marvellously distant country in this polluting, angry, confused and hurried world. Cool. Tranquil. Refreshing. Able to match ripeness in your wines with brightness and mouthwatering zest. Others would love to be able to do what you do. Don't listen to siren songs from other producers, and also many critics and consultants, who would like you to change toward the crowded middle way.

It’s 50 years since the beginning of Marlborough wine – what place do young wine regions play in an industry rich with honoured history and traditions?

The wine world was being stifled by tradition 50 years ago. Mediocrity was being rewarded and protected. Innovation was barely evident and was greeted with hostility. You guys broke open an entirely New World with Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. You created something that had no connection with any wine that had ever been made. You put the wine drinker at the front rather than at the back. You made wine a ‘drink’ that people gulped down because of the pleasure that it gave. Wine never did that before. There are lots of new wine regions today – most of them attempting to do what you started 50 years ago. And old stale wine areas have gained the courage to throw off the old and strive for the new. Tradition? You didn’t have any tradition, and look at you now.

A decade or so after those first plantings, you tasted your first Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and became a champion for this remote neck of the woods. What other New Zealand wines and regions have caught your attention?

Hawke's Bay - Gimblett Gravels garners a lot of the attention, and produces a lot of wines worth the spotlight. But the greater area of Hawke's Bay probably has as much potential for the types of wines it already makes and for numerous different types as any other area of New Zealand.

Awatere South - With global warming so evident already, Awatere has assumed a position of enormous importance in keeping the focus and excitement in Marlborough wines. I know there are water and infrastructure challenges, but there are also fabulous opportunities going down past the Ure, on to Kaikōura and even (he says optimistically) up the Clarence. The Political entity of Marlborough seems to spread pretty far south. And that white wine motherlode of limestone crops up more and more, further south of Awatere. Who's going to take the chance?

Waiheke - Fabulous original flavours are possible for those who don't overdo everything, and who don't overcharge us for the privilege.

Gisborne - It's difficult to predict whether Gisborne's perennial weather challenges are going to get better or worse with climate change. But the potential for good quality commercial Chardonnay, and world quality Chardonnay (from the fringes) is too good to ignore.

Nelson - Step-by-step proving its brilliance without ever shouting.

Masterton and Wairarapa - Martinborough seems to have found a greater understanding of how to maximise its excellent conditions. Masterton gets better every vintage.

Central Otago - The great enigma. What will Central prove to be best at in its brilliant southern extremeness? Pinot has made its reputation, so long as it now admits that its Pinot is quite different from any other Pinot in the world. So let them copy us, not the other way round. It'll stay a star, but thre's a lot more that could shine - red and white.

You campaign for the democratisation of wine. Are you seeing a shift?

The battle isn't won. Every generation needs to be addressed afresh. The most encouraging European wine markets are in the non-producing countries - old markets are in real disarray as wine fails to attract new consumers. Stay vigilant. Listen to your consumers. Make sure that simple, direct labelling backed up by good flavours is at the heart of what you set out to do. Sauvignon Blanc is still the white wine of choice in many parts of the world because it tastes so good and is easy to understand. If you want to sophisticate it, well, some of you can, but you forget your core market (the tens of millions of people who never thought they could ever like wine until you came along) at your peril.

When it comes to wine snobbery, including around Sauvignon Blanc, which wine drinkers are the hardest to convince?

Wine critics, sommeliers, so-called wine experts. Honestly! They can't bear the thought that there is a wonderful drink out there called Sauvignon Blanc that doesn't need any pontificating from. OK you lot, stay away from Sauvignon if it gives you too much pain to see so much simple pleasure.

What role has your stage work played in your ability to share a passion for wine?

Massively important. So much wine communication gets mired in technicalities and incomprehensible murmurings. Stage teaches you that if you want to get through to an audience, you have to project a personality, tell stories, illuminate places, make flavours relevant to other people's lives, not just your own, find FUN in this thing. I mean - why else do most people drink a glass?

Wine That Crackled and Spat

At the inaugural International Sauvignon Blanc Celebration in Marlborough in 2016, Oz Clarke talked of his first taste of Marlborough Sauvignon. It was 1984, and "my world of wine would never be the same again", he said. "There had never before been a wine that crackled and spat its flavours at you from the glass. A wine that took the whole concept of green - and expanded it, stretched it and pummelled it and gloriously re-interpreted it in a riot of gooseberry and lime zest, green apples, green pepper sliced through with an ice-cold knife of steel, piles of green grass, the leaves from a blackcurrant bush, and, just in case this was all too much to take - a friendly dash of honey and the chaste kiss of a peach."