Nelson’s “tiddlywinks” need to shout louder

So, I’m in Nelson – a 90-minute drive from Marlborough. It’s very different to Marlborough with most wineries less than 6km from the sea, 50% more rainfall and less diurnal temperature difference. Everyone you meet here will tell you that it is the wine region with the most sunshine hours too – apparently Marlborough tries to make that claim in the same way as Australia and New Zealand fight over who invented the pavlova, but Mike Brown, GM of Waimea Estates and chairman of Nelson Wineart (the regional winegrowers’ association) set the record straight: “In the last seven out of eight years we had had the most sunshine.” I’ll let you fight it out amongst yourselves.

The region is pretty small, making up just 4% of the country’s total production and boasting only 24 wineries. Most producers are small too. Seifried who produces 130,000 cases each year and Waimea Estate are the major players and even that pales in comparison to other major wineries, says Chris Seifried: “We are tiddlywinks compared to Kim Crawford, Wither Hills, Cloudy Bay and the likes.”

With all these small players, making a greater push internationally has been a hard task. Seifried added, “We have not been as loud as other regions. Many wineries sell all their production locally so they don’t need to go to the international wine shows. Nelson needs more people telling our story.”

Its story is currently focused on aromatic white varieties. But, you could argue so is Waipara’s and Marlborough’s, so I’m not sure how that’s a point of difference. Nevertheless, it isn’t Marlborough and, according to Brown that’s a big positive. “Where there’s a swathe of Marlborough wine on offer, people want something different. Many distributors are taking us on because we can offer that.”

Even though they aren’t Marlborough, Sauvignon Blanc leads the charge for the region, followed by Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir. However sales of SB haven’t been without difficulty this year, says Lars Jensen, director of sales and marketing at Te Mania Wines. “There’s huge demand for Sauvignon but small companies can’t compete with the big boys. Our distributors are looking for something else to sell. We sold everything but Sauvignon to our US distributor and we had to really work on him to take a pallet of it on consignment.” There’s always two sides to the story.

Tomorrow: did I set my expectations too high in Nelson?