An extract from the article...
"When our three venerable wine judges are in their dotage, if they receive a visit from a journalist to record the finest achievements of their lives in the wine industry, I hope at least one of them has the recall to say, “We discovered Banks Peninsula as an appellation for fine pinot noir”. Who knows, the guys may or may not end up in the same rest home, but the comment about the quality reputation for Banks Peninsula wine really could come to pass. The trio’s discovery came at the new releases tasting for this issue, when wines under the Whistling Buoy label, were tasted blind by Simon Nash MW, Ant Mackenzie and Barry Riwai.
The beauty of our professional new release tastings, unlike some Kiwi wine enthusiasts’ tastings, is that ours are blind, so pre-conceived ideas, perceptions, favourites, thoughts about people you’ve done business with in the past, those who haven’t paid their bills, wineries you don’t like, whether you’ll get any more payments from them in the future if you say something mean, plus 101 other considerations, are not part of the decision-making process. With WineNZ, it is solely about what’s in the glass."