New Zealand Cuisine - Wines

Wines

New Zealand has a successful wine industry, with about 76 million litres being exported in the year to June 2007. The first vines are thought to have been introduced by missionary Samuel Marsden, and planted in 1817 by Charles Gordon, superintendent of agriculture for the missionaries, according to Dr Richard Smart who was viticultural editor of both editions of The Oxford Companion to Wine. Official British resident James Busby is credited with producing wine at Kerikeri in 1833, and Charles Darwin noted the winery in his diary when he visited Kerikei in 1835.

Small vinyards were also planted by French settlers in Akaroa in the 1840s. However wine was drunk in relatively small qualities well into the twentieth century, with the average per capita consumption only about 2.6 litres in 1966. The high price of imported wines probably prevented New Zealanders from developing a taste for wine, although it did help sales of local vintages. The quality of these wines slowly improved, with New Zealand wines winning three gold and 13 silver medals at the International Wine Fair in 1963. Aided by the deregulation of the economy in the 1980s and 1990s, domestic wine consumption increased and New Zealand wine won increasing accolades internationally.

There are 10 major wine-producing areas in New Zealand, with Marlborough famed for its sauvignon blanc, Gisborne for its chardonnay, and Central Otago and Martinborough building a reputation for pinot noir and pinot gris. Hawkes Bay is known for its bold cabernets and Auckland's Waiheke Island is home to one of the top 20 cabernet blends in the world. Marlborough and Hawkes Bay are New Zealand's two premium wine-growing regions.