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Summary

New Zealand wine stands at a fork in the road.

One path leads towards corporate behemoths churning out industrial quantities of mass-market Sauvignon Blanc; the other features increasingly refined, site-specific wines across a range of styles that compete with the world’s very best.

Which will it be?

In this New Zealand Wines of the Year feature, we take you behind the scenes after tasting hundreds of wines to get to grips with what’s really going on in Kiwi wine.

We highlight the best producers, what they’re doing and why.

And we throw more than a few big calls out there – for example, why New Zealand Chardonnay and Pinot Noir is currently getting our vote over Burgundy…and why serious fizz should be part of New Zealand’s wine future.

On this very special Wine Blast episode, we’re privileged to be joined by New Zealand wine royalty in the shape of Helen Masters (Ata Rangi), Matt Thomson (Blank Canvas), Matt Sutherland (Dog Point), Kevin Judd (Greywacke), Ed Donaldson (Pegasus Bay)…and part-time actor, full-time wine superstar Sam Neill (Two Paddocks).

This programme is published in tandem with a full report (as below), which is free to download and comes with tons of information and opinion, from vintage summaries to planting stats, plus the odd map.

Thanks to New Zealand Winegrowers for facilitating this Wines of the Year initiative, and to the wineries for supporting. And THANK YOU for taking an interest.

Starring

• Sam Neill (Two Paddocks)
• Ed Donaldson (Pegasus Bay)
• Kevin Judd (Greywacke)
• Matt Sutherland (Dog Point)
• Matt Thomson (Blank Canvas)
• Helen Masters (Ata Rangi)

Report

What we don’t have time or space for in the podcast is to include all our glorious New Zealand Wines of the Year. That’s where this report comes in.

It’s a full listing of all these spectacular wines, together with tasting notes and scores.

But if that sounds boring, we’ve also made sure to pack in loads of opinion, facts and insights. And we’ve tried to keep the wine jargon to a minimum…

The PDF also includes vintage reports running from 2019-2025 plus a map.

The report also explains how our New Zealand Wines of the Year initiative works.

Essentially, on the basis of a pretty elite hit-list, we lined up more than 200 bottles in November 2025 before embarking on an epic three-day tasting.

On the basis of an extremely rigorous tasting, we chose our favourites (sometimes after quite heated discussions). Only wines scoring 93/100 and above made the grade, so this is a high bar. These wines are really special.

Based on these results we then chose our top awards. From Best Winemaker to Best Value, Best Producer to Innovation and Discovery. There are some great stories in there.

But enough chatter. Click on the link below to access our New Zealand Wines of the Year 2026 report. The link will take you to a short form to fill in your name and email, then it’s free to download.

Links

• Here’s a link to New Zealand Winegrowers, a treasure trove of information, inspiration (and stats, for those of a nerdy disposition like Peter…)

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Transcript

Coming soon