A glass or two at Neudorf

Cuisine-wise, the Nelson region packs a tummy punch way above its weight and gets my vote as the country’s ‘most delicious province’. By Alan Titchall.

Maybe it’s the benign climate, the wealth of prosperous-looking locals, or the southern drift of urbane refugees escaping the intensities of larger northern cities, but the Nelson region attracts a big slice of the country’s epicurean lifestylers.

Over three decades ago, Tim and Judy Finn set up a winery on Neudorf Road in the Moutere Hills, a little west of Nelson. The pair had no winemaking training but knew a ‘lifestyle’ opportunity when it jumped in front of them. The clay hills of the area were also reminiscent of the French wine region of Burgundy  – perhaps good for chardonnay and pinot? Their vinicultural intuition has proved an ongoing talent; Neudorf Vineyards was one of first to embrace the screwcap, and the world’s wine critics constantly sing praises over its pinots and chardonnays. 

This year the Finns harvested their 30th, and perhaps best, vintage.

Chef Grant Dicker and wife Katie-Jane operate Mint, one of Nelson’s many reputable dining houses. The pair returned home after leaving an Antipodean flavour at a stylish hotel at the seaside resort of Llandudno in North Wales. It’s amazing how many talented and tasty things return home with Kiwis who have done a tour of duty overseas, and I wonder how better off this country would be if we packed every young adult born here with a one-way airfare and told them not to come back for five years.

The menu at Hopgood’s  Restaurant & Bar, at the ‘Paris-end’ of Nelson’s main street, has a slight retro feel, and I say that very respectfully. Many good recipes disappear quickly in this food-faddish country. Carpaccio of beef was very popular in the 1990s and was a signature dish at such institutions as Ramses restaurant in Newmarket, Auckland under the capable Judith Taberon, before she found her financial soul in the city’s Viaduct. Hopgood’s serves up its thin, well-oiled slices of raw beef with Caesar-salad flavours topped with a crispy parmesan-crumbed boiled egg. How ‘two-century fusion’ is that?

Kevin Hopgood is from Essex in England, and so is my old mate Mick Mason who also lives in Nelson. Mick arrived in Auckland in the late 1960s and became a Kiwi ‘mad man’ – an advertising executive who also ventured into publishing as one of a trio who founded Metro magazine in 1981, and then North & South a few years later. A chip off the aged-cheddar block, his equally creative son is Chris Mason who set up the Burger Fuel franchise.

Mick has already enjoyed his three score years plus ten and is aging like a vintage English sports car – entertaining and fun when its parts are in the right mood, and cranky and obstinate when they are not. After selling up the Motueka Fishing Lodge, which he set up two decades ago, he is ‘sort of’ retired and spends much time appreciating and consuming the culinary spoils of the Nelson region and sharing his passion with visiting friends and family.

We are heading west to visit his old mates Judy and Tim Finn at Neudorf Vineyard, and we have a picnic in the boot that could feed a capacity turnout at Eden Park, with  leftovers. It doesn’t take long before Mick has our picnic laid out on a massive rustic table, at the rear of the winery, that Judy bought for Tim as a birthday present last year and is mostly used as the staff ‘lunch trough’.

“Are you starting an aviary over there?” Mick jokes to Judy, indicating to an area of vines covered with bird netting that has trapped a menagerie of winged grape raiders. It is a few weeks before the 2010 harvest and the birds are going nuts. Netting is an expensive necessity in New Zealand where wineries are never far from trees and forests.

Tim opens up an end of the netting and disappears. Between the crunching of crackers smeared with locally-made, taste-exploding Meadowcroft goats cheese, we hear him clapping in the distance as he musters the avian poachers towards the opening. A steady stream of birds rains out of the opening.

“Did you see the hare?” he asks, returning to the picnic table.
“The things you see when you don’t have a gun,” Mick quips.

There were enough grapes left by birds and hares to provide for a stunning vintage, with quality fruit, and a low yield, Judy tells me after the harvest. “The vintage has simply been the best of the vintages we have had to date, with less fruit, but better quality, which is not a bad thing in this current climate where the trend has been the price, not the quality of the wine.”
Recent consumer focus on quantity and price over quality reminds her of the 1970s when people talked about the size of their meals, not the quality, and I agree.

To celebrate that 30th vintage this year, the Finns opened some of their library wines at a special event at Hopgood’s, and again at Martin Bosley’s in Wellington and The French Café in Auckland. I note that at the Hopgood’s six-course celebration dinner the menu featured ‘smoked venison carpaccio with a crumbed, deep-fried quail egg, creamy celeriac and beet jelly’ served with Neudorf Moutere Pinot Noir 2007. 

Which brings me to the powerful but elegant Neudorf Moutere Pinot Noir 2008 that has become celebrated as setting a new standard for the winery among wine critics. The premium Moutere vintages, that Tim humbly credits to the “Moutere terroir”, is made only when the grapes are up to it.

The Finns juggle between our picnic table and a party of local vintage-sports-car enthusiasts who converge on the rustic winery for their final tour stop. On our table the conversation goes from grape raids to Judy’s milestone ‘vintage’ birthday next year, which she will celebrate with a circle of close friends. Judy says she likes an unpolished edge to her holiday, not too slick. Mick plugged for a Pacific-island cruise, Judy won with a resort in Vanuatu.

Cleaning up the picnic remains, Mick yells to Judy: “Catch!”

A left-over bun sails a good 10 metres before caught by Judy and sent back twice as fast. Mick just ducks in time. Add pitching to the winery’s talents.

The first time I met the Finns two decades ago I was a guest at one of their dinner parties just before the harvest of their 10th vintage. It was a rustic, exceptionally tasty meal, also enjoyed by a host of young visitors from wine-growing regions around the world who were on the ‘vintage circuit’.

The landscape photo (above) is of the Finns and Nuedorf staff, volunteers and international visitors after the 2010 vintage. Obviously the international winery circuit has grown over vintages.
“It is made of an extended family of people and friends that passionately care and share,” says Judy.

“It’s one very positive upside to this industry.” 

Winter 2010

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