Dog Point
3 Apr 2004 (The Age, Good Weekend)
Rarely does a new wine label spring up with such an impressive range of wines across the board. Sure, Dog Point is launching only three wines, but what wines they are. The men behind Dog Point are James Healy and Ivan Sutherland, both former long-term employees of New Zealand's biggest success story. Cloudy Bay - Heaiy as a winemaker with 14 years' experience in Marlborough, and Sutherland, who was born in Marlborough, as a viticulturalist. They both know their onions. ' To say they hit the ground running with Dog Point would be an understatement. They own an 80ha vineyard in the Brancott Valley, an off-shoot of Marlborough's main Wairau Valley. They have the beginnings of a winery on-site - well, okay, it's just a stab with a few tanks at this stage, but the expertise is enormous.I put their first three wines, a sauvignon blanc, pinot noir and chardonnay, all 2002s. into blind tastings of three dozen wines of each variety. Each Dog Point wine came at or near the top of the pile in each tasting. The sauvignon blanc is arguably the pick: it's a new take on the ''reserve'' style currently fashionable in Marlborough, and exemplified by Cloudy Bay's Te Koko. Barrel ferment, malolactic, stirred lees. wild yeasts, that sort of thing. An attempt to make a more complex wine from Marlborough's signature grape, without losing the pungent varietal character that people love. Simply called Dog Point Section 94 Marlborough ($30), it is a glorious wine. Smoky, toasty barrel and wild ferment characters mingle with hints of honey and herb, and through it all rides the bold, beautiful gooseberry flavour of Marlborough sauvignon blanc - as riotously unmistakable as you could want. The palate is rich and powerful, vibrantly alive and fascinating to the last drop.
The pinot noir ($37) is a sweetly seductive, ripe style with foresty, earthy and dark cherry to blackberry flavours - and a fine tannin backbone. And the chardonnay ($30) is classy, too, albeit a bit oaky at this stage and needing another year to mellow further. It has marvellous depth of pungent regional flavour, with brighter fruit and crisper acidity than you see in most Marlborough chardonnays.
A point of difference is that the grapes are alt hand-picked. As well, yields are low, and whites are whole-fruit pressed to minimise phenolics. There's no doubt we are seeing the birth of a new star in Kiwiland.
Huon Hooke