Wine Club 4 March

I adore the wines of New Zealand. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if I had to drink the wines of just one country — taking France out of the equation, of course — then New Zealand would do it for me.

There are spectacular aromatic whites from Marlborough, Gisborne and Nelson; soft, smooth and supple Pinot Noirs from Marlborough, Martinborough and Central Otago; and wonderfully sophisticated Bordeaux blends from Hawke’s Bay. There are also fab fizzes and exquisite sweet wines if you can find them.

So, just for the heck of it, thanks to an excellent proposed longlist from Mr.Wheeler, we’ve gone 100 per cent Kiwi this week with six typically tasty wines from the Land of the Long White Cloud.

And just so you know, Mr.Wheeler is the new trading name of our long-time partners The Wine Company. Their trademarked tag line ‘We Choose Better Wine’ might sound a mite too close to webuyanycar.com, but don’t let that put you off. Mr.Wheeler boasts some very fine wines, and operations director Mark Cronshaw, having sucked on his pencil and ummed and aahed, has come up with some very fine discounts too.

The 2014 Greenhough Moutere Gewurz-traminer (1), from a small, family-owned estate in Nelson in the north of the South Island, is an absolute peach. There’s all the spicy, peppery lychee-ness you might expect from this grape, but it’s kept in check with fine acidity and decent weight of fruit thanks to a year on the lees, a proportion of it in small oak barrels. I absolutely loved it. £12.00 down from £13.25.

The 2014 Sauvignon Blanc, Domain Road (2) is from Central Otago rather than Marlborough and thus something of a rarity. (The Domain Road Vineyard lies in an old gold-mining valley in Bannockburn.)