Fruit wine the choice
By Wine Atlas, Monday 26 September 2005 :: Wine - New-Zealand :: #68 :: rss
Why try to develop fruit characteristics in wine when you can make wine of the real thing, asks organic fruit winemaker Malcolm Hadlum.
"You hear wine experts say they love the raspberry taste of a pinot or the plum flavour in a cabernet," he says. "That may be so, but have they ever considered trying wine made of the real fruit."
Hadlum, who makes wine from plums, apples, feijoas and ginger, as well as cider from apples and mead from honey, at his winery beside Lake Horowhenua, has a thought- provoking view of winemaking.
"I ask wine connoisseurs to think outside the grape. It's a fruit that for centuries has been made into wine, with every connotation imaginable made from every variety. What if the same effort and technical expertise was applied to another fruit. Think about that – a great wine could be out there, still waiting to be discovered."
He thinks the feijoa has the capability to be the source of great wines. He makes it in both a dry style – light and acidic as a lunch accompaniment – and a dessert wine with a sweet and zesty flavour.
He says many grape-wine drinkers dismiss fruit wines as sickly or sweet, but change their minds after tasting his dry wines.
He makes a dry red from black doris plums and a dry white from Braeburn apples, as well as from feijoas. His cider is dry, and there's also a medium sweet and tangy green ginger wine, a medium four- years-aged honey mead and a medium port made from omega plums.
Continue reading: stuff.co.nz
