Gisborne

With all the clamour about Central Otago, or the swooning over Marlborough's achievements in getting our tiny country a place at the world's wine-drinking tables, or even the gallons of ink spilled about Waiheke's world-class reds, good ole Gisborne often gets forgotten. 'Hey, it all started here,' Gisborne-ites could rightly profess; and it continues, with exceptional Chardonnays, in particular, issuing forth from the sun-drenched hillsides and river valley sites. Gisborne is made to make wine: high sunshine hours, minimal rainfall, loam soils, perfectly posited for growing fine wine in the right hands. And Gisborne is in excellent hands: Matawhero pioneered the region (and the country, frankly) from the early 1970s, when collars were wide, grins were wider and the preferred mode of transportation around the vineyard sites was a Valiant Regal.