Catalina and Waihopai a successful mix

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Peter Jackson of Catalina Sounds is very serious about the future of the brand and its terroir, in the Waihopai Valley.

Peter Jackson of Catalina Sounds is very serious about the future of the brand and its terroir, in the Waihopai Valley.

Catalina Sounds describes itself as New Zealand’s most successful wine brand you have never heard of − and I can testify to the truth of that statement.

When a media pack arrived on my front doorstep with a thud and a clanking sound I stared blankly at the letter of introduction and thought it must be a newly launched label.

Not so. Scott Bower (GM of Endeavour Vineyards) and Peter Jackson (winemaker) have declared Catalina Sounds as the number one-selling ‘super premium’ wine brand in Australia.

The pair said Catalina has chosen to ‘fly below the radar’ until now although their wines are apparently well-known to many long-haul flyers – and they feel it’s time for a ‘domestic’ launch.

Okay, that’s the last of the ‘flying’ puns, since Peter Jackson is clearly very serious about the future of the brand and its terroir, in the Waihopai Valley.

“I have yet to visit a more ideally located wine region and a climate more suited to high-quality, cool-climate viticulture,” he says, nominating high sunshine hours, low summer rainfall and virgin soils.

“I continue to be be fascinated by the diversity of styles of wine that this region can produce, the sub-regional variation and excited by what may evolve in the future as the region matures.”

Catalina Sounds is producing a sauvignon blanc for $23, a pinot gris for $25 and a pinot noir for $28. A ‘Sound of White’ sauvignon blanc sells for $31, and all are selling with the help of Red + White Cellar.

Catalina describes its pinot noir as the product of 2013’s dry, warm and long growing season, without excessive heat. Fifty-five per cent of the grapes came from the Sound of White vineyard in the Waihopai Valley and the balance from the Clayridge vineyard in the Omaka Valley. It was aged for 10 months with oak and can be drunk ‘with confidence’ through to 2019.

The 2014 sauvignon blanc came from a “naturally high cropping year” and the vineyard team had to work hard to bring the vines back into balance and ensure fruit ripening in a timely fashion.

The fruit for Catalina’s 2014 pinot gris was hand-harvested on two days in March in its Sound of White vineyard in the Waihopai. It was whole bunch-pressed at the winery and two fermentation techniques were used. Eighty per cent of it was fermented slowly with high solids juice in stainless steel, building weight while preserving aromatics, while the other 20 per cent was fermented warm and fast in French oak puncheons with the lees heavily worked post-ferment to enhance ‘savouriness’ and aromatic interest to build a strong textural element into the wine. The wine sat unsuphured on heavy lees until the end of July this year, when the components were blended for bottling. Peter Jackson says the pinot gris can be drunk with confidence until 2017.

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