Now New Zealand’s Pinot Noirs are coming of age, it was suggested that there was no longer a need for producers to reference Burgundy, rather aim for authenticity in their own wines and communicate this effectively.
“I’m beginning to hear authentic voices,” stated keynote speaker, the British Burgundy expert, Jasper Morris MW, who spoke of having the confidence to tell one’s own story rather than have it told. “This is shining through.”
In being a largely natural product and one for which provenance is also extremely important in its highest examples, the concept of authenticity is highly relevant to wine. But just what makes a wine truly authentic and how to apply the concept to the country’s Pinot Noirs was something explored at the conference.
Finding a true voice
“The new generation of consumers see through stories that are generated,” claimed Australian wine writer, Mike Bennie in his keynote speech on the subject, citing examples of “the idyllic location of a vineyard that might not be idyllic for winegrowing; the impresario winemaker that produces wines to brief and the promise of exceptional wine based on third party endorsement”.
“These things are hackneyed,” he said, urging wineries to “find the story: don’t create it” if they’re to come across as authentic. However, given the youth of our wine industry and its vineyards, many are still trying to find their voice and the confidence to use it.
Moderating the main New Zealand regional tasting, UK wine critic, Tim Atkin urged his fellow panellists to avoid using the “B word” – Burgundy, maker of some of the world’s greatest Pinot Noirs, which are used as benchmarks for many working with the variety around the world.
Here in New Zealand it’s not been uncommon to hear winemakers describe attributes they consider positive in their own Pinots as “Burgundian”, while some have actively sought to emulate their French counterparts. However, as stressed by Bennie, you can’t be authentic if what you’re making is a copy.
Evidenced by a tasting of the hundreds of examples poured throughout the event, New Zealand’s own Pinot Noirs are really starting to develop their own distinctive characters: from the country’s Pinot producing regions and sub-regions, right down to individual blocks.
Authenticity is found in wines that express their own roots. They’re not trying to be Burgundies, they don’t have their identities distorted by winemaking artifice or dulled by chemicals and they’re made by people connected to the vines and not a marketeer constructing counterfeit brand stories.
This tendency to defer to Burgundy, whose wines have been telling their own story for centuries, doubtless stems from the fact that New Zealand’s winemakers are still discovering what their vineyards have to say, especially as the signature of a site for Pinot Noir tends to emerge in older vines.
“How long does it take for a vineyard to have a voice that transcends that of the winemaker?” asked local Pinot pioneer, Escarpment’s Larry McKenna at one of the event’s regional discussions. “Our oldest Pinot vineyards are about 30 years old, while in France vines that are under 50 years old are still considered young. It’s the next generation which will see the best of them.”
Lessons from Burgundy
Burgundy has its own challenges, as outlined by social anthropologist, Marion Demossier, who has made this complex region the focus of research, specifically on how its wine community relates to the notion of terroir and their collective sense of identity.
Demossier started her presentation by saying that the Burgundians could learn a lot from New Zealanders due to the professionalism of the conference, describing Burgundy as a region where “collectivism doesn’t exist”. From her speech that followed it could be deduced that New Zealand’s youthful status and approach as a Pinot producing nation may be no bad thing.
“There’s lots of individualism in Burgundy, which is based on the establishment of the AOC [appellation d’origine contrôlée – France’s system of geographical denominations] in Burgundy in the 1930s, which is a major handicap for starting to think collectively and asking questions” she maintained. “Burgundy may be an old vineyard area that’s 2000 years old, but to me they’ve just started the process very recently.
“A global imaginary of excellence is a very successful story but we have to learn that any cultural stories are of a specific time, but can change as competition is changing and the global markets are changing,” she added. “When you have vineyard that is so sedimented and so archaeologically presented, the idea of change and innovation is much more difficult and can be an obstacle.”
Communicating authenticity
New Zealand may have the edge on Burgundy when it comes to cooperation within the industry, but how should its individual players approach their own authenticity?
Speaking at a lunchtime session the Tokyo-based Australian ex-pat, Ned Goodwin MW used the personal analogy of his youthful pains when as an Australian boy he at first aped the characteristics of his Japanese peers until he found his own path. “Pinot Noir is not about perfection, it must boast ‘duende’ [magic],” he went on to claim. “It’s the search for an ideal, not authenticity.”
Authenticity as a term has also become tarnished by negative associations after it was adopted by marketers seeking to attract a new group of consumers who’d been left feeling empty and disconnected by the hyper consumerism of the past. It subsequently had the meaning flogged out of it and saw it coupled with products whose claims to authenticity were highly questionable.
Not only has defining the meaning of authenticity become difficult now, but using it has as well. This was something highlighted by the humorous but telling video of interviews compiled by Bennie, in which leading figures within wine struggled to find appropriate words when asked to define and discuss it.
In Bennie’s film, Banjo Harris Plane, the sommelier at Melbourne’s Attica restaurant neatly summed this up, likening people speaking about their own authenticity to those who have to tell you that they’re classy: “If you have to say ‘I’m authentic’, there’s no need,” he concluded, “as your actions show who you truly are and what you’re truly doing.” ν
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