The other Burgundy

The grass is always greener on the other side. For Grant Taylor, the ‘other side’—as the aphorism usually proves—turned out to be home. In the late 70s, after finishing his education at Lincoln College in Canterbury, New Zealand, the Kiwi left for California to visit friends who were studying at UC Davis. Having an interest in wine, he was drawn to Napa Valley, where he landed a job at Pine Ridge winery as an assistant winemaker for six years, before moving on to Domaine Napa. New Zealand’s wine scene was still finding its baby steps in the vino universe then, and the vibrant Napa Valley was bustling with work opportunities for eager young men like him.

But the increasing commercialism in Napa’s wineries did not sit comfortably with Taylor. “The marketing and sales people had a lot of say over how they wanted the wines to be made,” reveals Taylor. “So it wasn’t so much about winemaking, but about what the market wanted.”

Hearing word of the emergence of Pinot Noir in New Zealand’s Central Otago, he returned home in 1993 and started work at Gibbston Valley winery. The southerly Central Otago, guarded by mountain ranges, had only 20 hectares of grapes planted then; today, there are more than 1,700 hectares. Taylor, who went on to establish Valli winery in 1998, has come to be known as an authority on New Zealand Pinot Noir, especially with his wins in 2002 and 2007 for the Best Pinot Noir trophy at the London International Wine Challenge (no other vintner has won this accolade twice). Last October, he also picked up the Bouchard Finlayson Pinot Noir Trophy for his Gibbston Pinot Noir 2010 at the International Wine and Spirit Competition 2012 in London.

Excerpt from the January issue of epicure