2013
Laced with emotion is best

Dry River has the good fortune of strong support amongst the wine press and trade. As a celebration of our 30th vintage we have asked one of our friends in the industry to pen a piece relating to Dry River in some way.

Our first contributor is one of New Zealand’s most prolific writers, Keith Stewart. Keith writes widely on subjects including agriculture, architecture and art. Well known for his strong opinions and fearlessness of establishment, Keith is never far away from controversy!

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2010
life in a wine

Science likes to offer simple answers, nature rarely poses simple questions. A science of making top quality wine does not exist – instead we have a collection of scientific understandings of narrow questions relating to the making of fine wines and it is up to the winemakers to assemble the knowledge required for their own situation/terroir. It is not surprising then that winemakers do not (or should not) slavishly follow “recipes” from elsewhere. Nevertheless, for fine wine, there is one common goal which all will strive for and that is the need for a long-lived wine to allow the development of the virtues and flavours of the classic varietal(s) in the bottle.

“...for fine wine, there is one common goal which all will strive for...”

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2009
Points of Terroir

Reprinted from “The World of Fine Wine” Issue 23, 2009, pp31–32 where my article was first published. I must commend “The World of Fine Wine” for its in-depth range of subjects and writing. I like it too, because of how it reports on wines. Take for example the report on the Barbaresco wines1: Barbaresco 2004. A detailed and interesting article on these wines is followed by very readable tasting notes from three top reviewers. These tasters clearly see the wines from different points of view but, reading the three descriptions on any one of the wines allows one to interpolate to give a very nice and quite sufficient picture of what they had in front of them. Their scores are also included and I am not the slightest bit surprised that these are more divergent – inevitably 2–4 points out of 20 apart for the 48 wines, indicating differences in individual preference rather than any consistent bias in the way they are scored. Full marks for publishing all the scores. “...It is clear the texts give us a good handle on how the wines appeared and that the scores mostly have little significance except for the writers who scored them...“

Reprinted from “The World of Fine Wine” Issue 23, 2009, pp31–32 where my article was first published.

I must commend “The World of Fine Wine” for its in-depth range of subjects and writing. I like it too, because of how it reports on wines. Take for example the report on the Barbaresco wines1: Barbaresco 2004. A detailed and interesting article on these wines is followed by very readable tasting notes from three top reviewers. These tasters clearly see the wines from different points of view but, reading the three descriptions on any one of the wines allows one to interpolate to give a very nice and quite sufficient picture of what they had in front of them. Their scores are also included and I am not the slightest bit surprised that these are more divergent – inevitably 2–4 points out of 20 apart for the 48 wines, indicating differences in individual preference rather than any consistent bias in the way they are scored. Full marks for publishing all the scores.

“...It is clear the texts give us a good handle on how the wines appeared and that the scores mostly have little significance except for the writers who scored them...“

Read more from this musing