1990 is a special year for me. Two of my biggest passions, as some of you will know, are football (well, mainly my local team Crystal Palace FC really) and wine (well, mainly French wine really).
I first tasted Kumeu River Chardonnay at The White Horse, Chilgrove in the late 1980's. It was probably the 1987 vintage but could even have been the first ever vintage - 1985. Despite being a young wine merchant with a focus almost exclusively on French wines, I was really impressed by it and decided to track some down. Not long after this, I travelled to New Zealand in January 1990 where I saw Linford Christie win the 100m in the Commonwealth Games. More importantly, as it turned out, I visited the Kumeu River winery where I met Michael Brajkovich (New Zealand's first Master of Wine) for the first time along with his dad, Maté. I saw the vineyard that they were in the process of planting (that was subsequently named "Maté's Vineyard" following Maté's death) and tasted the 1989 vintage Kumeu River Chardonnay from barrel. This was a brilliant Chardonnay then and it remained so for many years afterwards. This is a wine that I subsequently served blind to visiting French winemakers, and other guests, scores of times over the coming years and they invariably guessed it to be a Corton Charlemagne or a Meursault.
