PEGASUS BAY -- THE ROYAL TIPPLE
The Czars of Russia are known to have downed vast amounts of the most famous of sweet white wines, namely Chateau d'Yquem. Winston Churchill had a definite preference for Pol Roger Champagne and that House now names its deluxe bubbly after him. At the initial summit between the Presidents of the United States and the USSR, Stags Leap Cabernet Sauvignon was served. There are all sorts of legends about wine in the highest of places, but they have one thing in common: namely, the wines chosen are fitting for the occasion and they are of the finest quality.
We have it on the best of authority that the Flying Horse is definitely soaring into this realm and it was recently served at a Royal luncheon when Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited New Zealand. Rumour has it that they came to this country for the express purpose of trying Pegasus Bay wines first hand, although they did it under the guise of opening that boring old CHOGM meeting. It certainly sounds logical to us.
The 1994 Pegasus Bay Chardonnay and 1994 Pegasus Bay Pinot Noir were said to go down very well, and we heard tell that a magnum found its way back to Buckingham Palace by a devious route!
We felt very proud to have been able to be of Royal service. Who knows? Perhaps Pegasus Bay will soon be By Royal Appointment.
A VISIT FROM THE KING OF WINEWRITERS
About 30 years ago, when New Zealand consisted of a nation of 6 o'clock brutish beer swillers and the blood of the grape was about as fasionable as it is with the Ayatollah, my then financée and now wife gave me a book, which changed the course of our lives. The beguilingly simple title "Wine" did not give any indication of its power to subvert and destroy. It if wasn't for that damned book, I might have happily been tending a few cabbages in my back garden and mowing my lawns on Sunday afternoon. Instead, I and my family have 55,000 grape vines to look after and Pegasus Bay was born.
The pied piper who wrote "Wine" has caused many others throughout the world to dance to the same tune. His name is Hugh Johnson and without a doubt he is the most distinguished winewriter in the world. He has subsequently written a number of other books, including his best selling "World Atlas of Wine" and his recent "The Story of Wine". He has breathed life into the world of wine and made it a topic of fascination which is easily accessible by all.
A few months back I received a telephone call which made me sit up and take notice. Hugh Johnson was coming to New Zealand for two or three days and wanted to visit three or four wineries. Would we be happy to show him over Pegasus Bay? It took me all of about one microsecond to decide. We would not be happy, we would be ecstatic!
Hugh Johnson not only spent the afternoon at Pegasus Bay Winery, but he came to dinner that night. Like most great men, he proved to be very down to earth and quite humble. He tried this bottle, sampled out of that barrel and siopped out of the other tank. Always interested, asking questions and making assessments. We have had many wine professionals through Pegasus Bay, but few whose depth of knowledge and experience can approach that of Hugh Johnson. Perhaps one of the most impressive things about him is that he did something that other winewriters have not thought important, he requested to see the vineyard. Not only did he want to inspect it, but he wanted to know all about it, soil type, varieties of grapes, pruning methods, trellising systems and the like. But, I forgot to mention, apart from wine, his other love is plants. He is a world authority on trees and has written extensively on the subject. By the time Hugh Johnson left, I was as much under his spell as I had been when I first came across him 30 years ago. Pegasus Bay felt privileged to be one of the few vineyards and wineries in New Zealand to have been selected for a visit by this guru.
THE DAME GETS ON HER HIGH HORSE
It was a hot, sultry afternoon. The weeping willow stirred lazily and the dragonflies skimmed across the ponds to land on bulrushes. Bright hillside flowers were reflected on the surface of the water and floating on the wings of the breeze came the most heavenly sound. Gentle at first, it gradually swelled until it filled the dell with its own special sunshine; bright and clear, but muted and soft. The incomparable Dame Malvina Major, Auckland soprano Gina Sanders, Sydney-based Grant Smith and Adrian McEniery from Melbourne, along with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Maestro Brian Law, were busy enchanging a large crowd. One Sunday in February 1995, Pegasus Bay held its first charity concert, in aid of Canterbury Opera. The day was perfect in every respect and the ecstatic crowd let the performers know. Fortunately, Dame Malvina has graciously agreed to ride the flying horse again and will head the list of stars to sing at the 1996 Pegasus Bay charity concert on February 11th. We are proud to be able to sponsor this event. Bookings are through BASS. Bring rugs, seats, picnics and make it a day out with a group of friends. Mouthwatering pre-paid hampers and other foods prepared by Edward will be available to make it the most memorable of occasions. Naturally, there will be plenty of fine wine.
THE FLYING WINEMAKERS FROM PEGASUS BAY
Pegasus Bay winemakers Matthew Donaldson and Lynnette Hudson don't sit still and have clocked up well over 20 vintages between them! Such experience would take decades to achieve if you just stayed in one place. They have gained extensive knowledge and special expertise, so they are in great demand. Last year, Matthew did a vintage in Burgundy before going on to do another in Romania, while Lynnette did one in Hungary. This year they were head hunted by a German firm to make wine for them at Timisoara in Romania. The fruit is excellent, but traditional Romanian winemaking techniques are designed to cure that, and the resulting wine could be said to conform to communist standards of egalitarianism. That is to say, it is uniformly dull. Matthew and Lynnette's job was to oversee making the 1995 vintage at two large wineries and to raise the standard of wine so that it would be suitable for export to western European countries, such as Britain. As their Romanian is pretty basic, they had to work through an interpreter. We understand they did a superb job, but they are glad to be back to the quiet little backwater of Pegasus Bay after three months on the other side. Welcome home!
FOOD WITH FLAIR
Pegasus Bay restaurant has a new head chef. Guess who? It is none other than Edward Donaldson. After doing the three-year chef's course at PolyTech in Christchurch, he decided he would like to expand his horizons and went to Europe, where he worked for a series of top restaurants. Edward was fortunate enough to be able to move from one establishment to another, picking up some very special tips. He didn't ignore the wine side and toured Europe's main wine growing areas, ending up at the huge multinational wine industry fair, Vin Expo, in Bordeaux.
Edward's aim is to promote mouthwatering imaginative food which goes with the wines we produce. The emphasis is thus on matching fine wine with splendid food, which after all is what Pegasus Bay is all about.
VINTAGE 1995 -- EXCELLENCE WRAPPED IN PERFECTION
We were veyr pleased with the wines we made in 1994. The cropping levels were low, which ensured good fruit concentration in the wines. A warm summer did the rest and the quality was good. The volume of wine, however, was somewhat less than we would have liked. The 1995 vintage, on the other hand, not only had superb quality, but also carried the blessing of quantity. December was warm, ensuring that the flowers werwe well pollinated and that the crop set fully. This was followed by a long, hot summer. This scenario was repeated all over the country and, until the start of April, it looked as though New Zealand was headed for the vintage of the decade. Then, the rain set in and in most of the vineyard regions, it didn't let up for a month. This led to the wines being of somewhat lesser quality than would have been the case. Not so in Waipara! While the clouds dumped their bountiful riches over much of the land, we had day after day of sunshine and were not at all bothered by rain. The resulting wines show splendid overall quality. We couldn't have asked for more.
PEGASUS BAY -- SLOW OR STYLISH
It you think that this newsletter, which is timed to accompany our most recent wine releases, is rather late, then let us hasten to assure you that you are perfectly correct. Most other wineries released their current vintage wines four or five months ago. Are we laid back, a touch slow or just plain inefficient? Actually it is none of these. the winemaking style we are emphasising depends on more than just upfront fruit, it has weight in the mouth and plenty of length. In addition, we are after a special mid-palate texture; a type of creaminess. In order to achieve this, we age even our current vintage white wine on lees, which is the natural yeast that has fermented it. This means we give our wines substantially more time to mature than most people. We also believe in keeping wines in bottle until we feel they are ready to release. You can't hurry good wine and if you do, it ceases to be good. All of our wines have received substantial aging in tank and bottle before they go on sale. While they are ready to drink, they will also benefit from further cellaring.
FROM THE PRESCRIPTION PAD
You don't have to be a physician to know that alcohol in excess is bad for you. Even if you're still in short pants, this should be fairly self-evident. It is not so obvious, however, that alcohol taken in small amounts might be good for you. If you stop to think about it, it might help to explain why the stuff has been around for four or five thousand years. I'm not a Bible basher, but the good book has a fairly clear message: Wine in moderation is a blessing, drunkenness is a curse. Sometimes the Saints and sages are quite specific. Take 1 Timotny 5:23, where we are encouraged to "Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomachs sake and for thine often infirmities."
Back in the 1970's, several groups of medical research workers scientifically established that small amounts of alcohol were actually beneficial to health and they discovered the "U-shaped mortality curve." That is to say that when they studied a population and drew a graph with the death rate increasing up the vertical axis and alcohol consumption increasing along the horizontal axis, the curve had a U-shape. Teetotallers on the left of the graph had a higher mortality rate than those in the middle who drank moderately. In the heavy drinkers on the right of the graph, the protective effect of alcohol was lost with death rates increasing sharply. Alcohol in moderate amounts thus seemd to have a positive health benefit. Further analysis showed this was particularly related to a reduced incidence of cardio-vascular disorders, such as coronary thrombosis or heart attack, the major cause of death in our community.
One of the main questions that has exercised the medical profession in the last 20 years is why alcohol has this effect and it turns out to be quite complicated. There are probably several reasons. Cholesterol is found in every cell in the body and is necessary for life. Within the blood there are two main types of cholesterol, one which tends to cause cardiovascular disease and another which acts to prevent it. Moderate alcohol consumption increases the beneficial type of cholesterol. The protection that this could afford is relatively modest and not by itself sufficient to explain favourable effects of alcohol. Another factor may be that alcohol tends to lessen the tendency of blood to clot or thrombose, hence making disorders, such as coronary thrombosis, less likely. The Journal of the American Medical Association last year published a study of a group of American doctors and showed that moderate alcohol intake increased a natural substance in the blood called tissue-type plasminogen activator, which protects against the formation of clots. There have been further studies showing possible mechanisms whereby alcohol might have protective effects.
Who drinks alcohol? Nobody that I know, although it has been heard of in Skid Row! What we consume is actually a beverage that contains alcohol, and a lot of other things as well. The burning question is, do all forms of alcoholic drink have the same effect on health? For quite some time, research workers have suspected this might not be the case and that it might explain the so-called "French paradox." That is to say, the French diet is quite high in fat and cholesterol, but the rate of cardiovascular disease is surprisingly low, even allowing for the fact that the French drink quite a lot of alcohol. Could it be that wine has some particular beneficial effect not common to other alcoholic forms of drink? There now seems little doubt that the answer is yes. There have now been several scientific studies suggesting that the mortality rate is lower in countries where alcohol is consumed as wine, rather than as other drinks. The tannins in red wines seem capable of preventing the metabolism of certain types of cholesterol into more harmful products, but there are probably other factors involved as well. An important piece of researcdh has just been published in The British Medical Journal, which shows that wine is healthier than other alcoholic beverages. In a study involving more than 13,000 people, whowwere followed for 10-12 years, a group of Danish researchers found the positive health effects of alcohol were virtually entirely restricted to those who drank wine. Even when the amounts of alcohol consumed daily were equal, beer was found to have no overall effect on health, and spirits were positively harmful. The risk of dying for those drinking moderate amounts of wine was approximately helf htat of non-drinkers. In addition, the study seems to show that the tail of the "U-shaped mortality curve," in which the death rates increases with rising alcohol consumption, is probably due to the effects of beer and spirits. The positive effects of wine consumption were still seen in those who drank 3-5 glasses daily, whereas at this level other forms of alcohol were associated with a rising death rate.
A month or two back, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an editorial in which they estimated that the excess deaths caused by alcohol abuse due to accidents and the like are probably cancelled out by lives saved through prevention of heart attack. This editorial points out that most alcohol-related deaths occur in a select group of the population: namely, people under the age of 45, and most of these are males. It stresses that advice given to patients should be targeted at the individual, rather than just trying to discourage drinking in general. I find that this makes good sense. We should be encouraging sensible drinking habits, rather than just being negative. In addition, it's high time our glorious leaders who generate so much hot air around Wellington took this information aboard. Excise tax is usually justified by saying it is to help pay for the extra cost that alcohol imposes on our society, without taking into account any of its beneficial effects. More importantly, alcoholic beverages are taxed as though they all had the same effect on health, which has not been shown to be quite untrue. Not only does medical evidence show that wine has positive health benefits not shared by beer and spirits, but it is not the beverage that tends to be abused by the young boozers, who induce social havoc. To a simple minded man like me, it seems pretty clear that the excise rate on wine should be substantially lower than that on other alcoholic drinks and could quite justifiably be abolished. If you're a wine lover like me, you should lean on your MP to do something about it. After all, it's your money they're taking under false pretences. Who knows, if we can find some young radical politician, perhaps they'll even pay us to drink wine!
Cheers, Ivan Donaldson
