“Can we change your mind about New Zealand wine?” asked the press release. Um, not really. I mean, not with a sauvignon blanc. If you really want to change someone’s mind about a winemaking region, doing so with a textbook example of the single most typical wine of that region would seem an unusual and almost certainly futile way to go about it.
Te Pa (sorry, te Pā*) is a newish Marlborough winery, which released its first wine in 2011 and has 150 hectares of sauvignon blanc under the management of a Welshman named Garath Exton. Their sauvignon is good, crisp and extremely characterful, with an extravagant aroma (it doesn’t just whiff mildly of New Zealand sauvignon, it absolutely reeks of it. It extravagantly hums; if you pushed a blindfolded person into a smallish room with a glass of te Pā in it, they’d know there was a Kiwi in town). Bewilderingly pungent, if you want to teach someone exactly what Kiwi sauvignon blanc smells and tastes like, a glass of this could scarcely be bettered.
I note that The Wine Society, which sells it for £9.95 (as do the Real Wine Company), suggests it should be drunk with vegeree (I later discover that their website makes different suggestions every time you look at the wine, which is confusing of them). I’ve never heard of vegeree, but assume it’s a vegetarian version of kedgeree, the popular mildly curried smoked haddock-starring rice-based breakfast dish. It would probably go fine with kedgeree too, and much else besides. If you like your average Kiwi sauvignon blanc, you’re going to think this is excellent (it is considerably better than average, and not much more expensive). If you don’t, well, it’s not going to change your mind.
According to their website, “currently, te Pā produce only Sauvignan Blanc”, but the Wine Society also stock a pinot gris for £9.50 (cheaper here than in New Zealand, where it works out just under £11) and Kiwis can also find a pinot noir, a pinot-based rose and a premium, lees-aged sauvignon blanc, so we might see more of this company and their rather smart, embossed and curved labels over here in future. This, though, is a promising debut.
* I’ve read pretty much the whole of their website and I still don’t know what te Pā means, though I can tell you that tepa, without the space or the funny line, is a crystalline organophosphorus compound often used as an insect sterilant, which might make a bottle of this wine absolutely hilarious in certain insect-sterilising circles.
I can also tell you that tepa is a traditional food of the Alaskan Yup’ik people, and consists of fish heads that have been mixed with their eviscerated innards and left to ferment. Tepa, for obvious reasons, is also known as stinkheads. (Recipe in full, courtesy of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game: “The traditional way to prepare tepa is to bury the heads in the ground along with most of the fish guts in a wooden barrel covered with [hessian]. This is allowed to ferment for about a week, depending on weather conditions.”) Yum! I fear that this might limit this particular wine’s potential in the Alaskan market, although there’s a chance that it might coincidentally be a fairly good match for its (allegedly) edible namesake. Neither do I have any idea how to pronounce an a when there’s straight line hovering over it – it’s obviously a Māori thing.
cellarfella.com 