IT seems rather fitting this week to revisit New Zealand, the home of Hobbits, the All Blacks and Sauvignon Blanc.

I’ve probably upset the French with that statement so let me pay tribute to the Loire Valley as Sauvignon’s spiritual home while recognising Marlborough, New Zealand, as its new holiday home.

It was our own Cumbrian wine writer Jancis Robinson who coined the phrase “cat’s pee on a gooseberry bush” for the classic aroma of a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and it was the now legendary Cloudy Bay vineyard whose wine she was referring to. Over the last 40 years, Marborough has well and truly taken the crown for the best Sauvignon Blancs in the world and the delicious irony is that it’s the fault of the European Union and the jet age.

While wine-making in New Zealand dates back to 1836, it was a backwater industry until Britain joined the EU (or the EEC as it then was) in the early 1970s and the traditional favourable deals for lamb and dairy products between our former colony and the mother country ended. New Zealand needed to diversify its economy and more and more New Zealanders were now travelling to Europe by jet and experiencing the delights of French and German fine wines.

They promptly took ideas back home and started to show us all how to do it right.

Our old friend Oz Clarke probably put the final nail in the coffin of Sancerre as the place to find the best Sauvignons when he declared in 1990 that the New Zealand versions were the best in the world! Another wine critic said experiencing their Sauvignon for the first time was like having sex for the first time again, so presumably his second glass was much better!

While we do tend to think of the country as having been born again in terms of wine in the 1970s, it does actually have one of the oldest commercial wineries in the world, Mission Estates, which was founded by French Catholics in 1850-something.

Anyway, back to Cloudy Bay. The owner and founder of Cloudy Bay had a vineyard in Western Australia called Ironstone which still makes one of the finest Zinfandels in the world.

From there they opened the Cape Mentelle vineyard in Margaret River, Australia, and then Cloudy Bay. To this day, the labels of all the wines tend to have elements of the same in them all, notably clouds.

There are of course two main islands making up New Zealand and both produce wines, but increasingly it’s the Marlborough region in the north of South Island that has become the world-beater in Sauvignon blancs while the north is more of a general-purpose growing area with some success in Cabernet and Merlot in addition to their whites.

A striking difference between New Zealand and the Old World is that many wineries, including the Whitehaven one, don’t actually have vineyards attached to them. The concept of being tied to your own production through good vintages and bad is an anathema to the Kiwis.

I remember Whitehaven winery owner Greg White telling me he purchased from a selection of grapes from 30 or so landowners which meant he could maintain a quality level by buying the best parcels that Old World vineyards could only dream of.

Anyway, my personal favourite wine just happens to be a white from New Zealand and also just happens to be called Whitehaven. We had Greg and Sue, the founders of the vineyard, over to Whitehaven on a couple of occasions shortly after the vineyard started (it’s one year older than our shop) but sadly in the intervening years, Greg passed away and Sue has taken the challenge of furthering his dream on her own.

The winemaker since 2000 has been Sam Smail who is actually a microbiologist by qualification who had studied in Australia, Italy and the Napa Valley before returning to his home country and joining the Whitehaven team.

I once told a lady that the Whitehaven Sauvignon was made on Bransty from grapes grown on Kells and lo and behold that rumour came back to bite me years later when I was criticised for not featuring the local vineyard at the early festivals.

Mind you Oz rekindled the rumours two years ago by declaring that Kells was the perfect location to try a Cumbrian vineyard so you never know there could be an Oz & Gerry’s coming to a Georgian town near you soon!

In addition to Sauvignon Blanc, Kiwi world also produces some fabulous Pinot Noirs which retain much of the earthy character of Burgundy but combine it with soft, sweet fruits at a fraction of the price.

The North Island has also had a lot of success with Riesling, Cabernet, Merlot and Syrah but I tend to find that, other than in the warmer years, their reds are a bit grassy which tends to mean there is less fruit than vegetation flavours and their Rieslings are just generally too dry for me. Think of petrol and you come close.

Anyway the column is really about one grape type and one wine in particular: the Whitehaven Sauvignon Blanc. It is a wine that we could virtually run the shop on at times although its dominance has been sorely tested recently by the Toffee Vodka from Keswick.

Anyway it’s nearly time for Strictly so I need to wrap up with a couple of recommendations. Crack open a nice bottle and put the reclining chair back... ah Sunday evening bliss.