Alcohol in New Zealand

File:Speights brewery.jpg

Speight's brewery in Dunedin

Alcoholic beverages have been drunk in New Zealand since the early days of European arrival.

History

During the late 19th and early 20th century, the New Zealand temperance movement became a powerful and popular lobby group, as similar movements did in the UK and the USA. In 1919 at a national referendum poll, prohibition gained 49% of the vote and was only defeated when the votes of returned servicemen were counted.

Well known temperance activists in New Zealand include William Fox, Frank Isitt, Leonard Isitt, Elizabeth McCombs, James McCombs, Kate Sheppard, Robert Stout and Tommy Taylor.

Six o'clock swill

One aspect of wartime regulation was made permanent after the end of the First World War: a 6 pm closing time for licensed premises. This created the culture of the six o'clock swill, a law that was not repealed until 1967, and was to have an influence on the styles of beer brewed and drunk in New Zealand.

Consumption

Further information: Binge drinking

Beer

Main article: Beer in New Zealand

Beer is the most popular alcoholic drink in New Zealand, accounting for 63% of available alcohol for sale. New Zealand is ranked 21st in beer consumption per capita, at around 75.5 litres per person per annum. The vast majority of beer produced in New Zealand is a type of lager, either pale or amber in colour, and between 4%–5% alcohol by volume.

Wine

Further information: New Zealand wine

Alcohol law

Licensing trusts

Licensing trusts, under New Zealand law, are community-owned companies with a monopoly on the development of premises licensed for the sale of alcoholic beverages and associated accommodation in an area.

Production

Beer

Main article: Beer in New Zealand

Early history

There is no oral tradition or archaeological evidence of Māori brewing beer before the arrival of Europeans. Major ingredients of beer were not introduced to New Zealand until Europeans arrived in the late-18th century. Captain James Cook brewed a beer flavoured with local spruce tree needles while visiting New Zealand in 1773 in order to combat scurvy aboard ship. He brewed the beer while anchored in Ship Cove in the outer reaches of Queen Charlotte Sound in January 1770. Here he experimented with the use of young rimu branches as a treatment against scurvy. It was brewed on Saturday 27 March 1773 on Resolution Island, in Dusky Sound, Fiordland. The beer was brewed using wort with addition of molasses and rimu bark and leaves. James Cook wrote:

"We also began to brew beer from the branches or leaves of a tree, which much resembles the American black-spruce. From the knowledge I had of this tree, and the similarity it bore to the spruce, I judged that, with the addition of inspissated juice of wort and molasses, it would make a very wholesome beer, and supply the want of vegetables, which this place did not afford; and the event proved that I was not mistaken."

The first commercial brewery in New Zealand was established in 1835 by Joel Samuel Polack in Kororareka (now Russell) in the Bay of Islands. During the 19th century, New Zealand inherited the brewing traditions and styles of the United Kingdom and Ireland, being where the majority of European immigrants originated from during that time – thus the dominant beer styles would have been ales, porters & stouts.

20th century

The culture of the six o'clock swill was to have an influence on the styles of beer brewed and drunk in New Zealand. In the 1930s, the New Zealander Morton W. Coutts invented the continuous fermentation process. Gradually, beer production in New Zealand shifted from ales to lagers, using continuous fermentation. The style of beer made by this method has become known as New Zealand Draught, and became the most popular beer during the 6 o'clock swill period.

During the same period, there was a gradual consolidation of breweries, such that by the 1970s virtually all brewing concerns in New Zealand were owned by either Lion Breweries or Dominion Breweries. From the 1980s small boutique or microbreweries started to emerge, and consequently the range of beer styles being brewed increased. The earliest was Mac's Brewery, started in 1981 in Nelson. Some pubs operated their own small breweries, often housed within the pub itself.

21st century

In recent years, pale and amber lager, the largest alcoholic drinks sector in terms of volume sales, have been on a downward trend as a result of a declining demand for standard and economy products.

Conversely, ale production in New Zealand is primarily undertaken by small independent breweries & brewpubs, the Shakespeare Brewery in Auckland city being the first opened in 1986 for the 'craft' or 'premium' sector of the beer market. In 2010, this 'craft/premium' sector grew by 11%, to around 8% of the total beer market. This has been in a declining beer market, where availability of beer has dropped 7% by volume in the two previous years.

Craft beer and microbreweries were blamed for a 15 million litre drop in alcohol sales overall in 2012, with Kiwis opting for higher-priced premium beers over cheaper brands.

The craft beer market in New Zealand is varied and progressive, with a full range of ale & lager styles of beer being brewed. New Zealand is fortunate in that it lies in the ideal latitude for barley and hops cultivation. A breeding programme had developed new hop varieties unique to New Zealand, many of these new hops have become mainstays in New Zealand craft beer.

Given the small market and relative high number of breweries, many breweries have spare capacity. A recent trend has seen the rise of contract brewing, where a brewing company contracts to use space in existing breweries to bring the beer to the market. Examples of contract brewers include Funk Estate, Epic Brewing Company and Yeastie Boys.

Over 2011 and 2012, New Zealand faced a shortage of hops, which affected several brewers countrywide, and was mainly due to a hop shortage in North America and an increase in demand for New Zealand hops overseas.

Wine

Main article: New Zealand wine

Early history

Wine making and vine growing go back to colonial times in New Zealand. British Resident and keen oenologist James Busby was, as early as 1836, attempting to produce wine at his land in Waitangi. In 1851 New Zealand's oldest existing vineyard was established by French Roman Catholic missionaries at Mission Estate in Hawke's Bay. Due to economic (the importance of animal agriculture and the protein export industry), legislative (prohibition and the temperance) and cultural factors (the overwhelming predominance of beer and spirit drinking British immigrants), wine was for many years a marginal activity in terms of economic importance. Dalmatian immigrants arriving in New Zealand at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century brought with them viticultural knowledge and planted vineyards in West and North Auckland. Typically, their vineyards produced sherry and port for the palates of New Zealanders of the time, and table wine for their own community.

The three factors that held back the development of the industry simultaneously underwent subtle but historic changes in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973, Britain entered the European Economic Community, which required the ending of historic trade terms for New Zealand meat and dairy products. This led ultimately to a dramatic restructuring of the agricultural economy. Before this restructuring was fully implemented, diversification away from traditional protein products to products with potentially higher economic returns was explored. Vines, which produce best in low moisture and low soil fertility environments, were seen as suitable for areas that had previously been marginal pasture. The end of the 1960s saw the end of the New Zealand institution of the "six o'clock swill", where pubs were open for only an hour after the end of the working day and closed all Sunday. The same legislative reform saw the introduction of BYO (bring your own) licences for restaurants. This had a profound and unexpected effect on New Zealanders' cultural approach to wine.

Finally the late 1960s and early 1970s noted the rise of the "overseas experience," where young New Zealanders travelled and lived and worked overseas, predominantly in Europe. As a cultural phenomenon, the overseas experience predates the rise of New Zealand's premium wine industry, but by the 1960s a distinctly New Zealand identity had developed and the passenger jet made the overseas experience possible for a large numbers of New Zealanders who experienced first-hand the premium wine cultures of Europe.

First steps

In the 1970s, Montana in Marlborough started producing wines which were labelled by year of production (vintage) and grape variety (in the style of wine producers in Australia). The first production of a Sauvignon blanc of great note appears to have occurred in 1977. Also produced in that year were superior quality wines of Muller Thurgau, Riesling and Pinotage. The excitement created from these successes and from the early results of Cabernet Sauvignon from Auckland and Hawkes Bay launched the industry with ever increasing investment, leading to more hectares planted, rising land prices and greater local interest and pride. Such was the boom that over-planting occurred, particularly in the "wrong" varietals that fell out of fashion in the early 1980s. In 1984 the then Labour Government paid growers to pull up vines to address a glut that was damaging the industry. Ironically many growers used the Government grant not to restrict planting, but to swap from less economic varieties (such as Müller Thurgau and other hybrids) to more fashionable varieties (Chardonnay and Sauvignon blanc), using the old root stock. The glut was only temporary in any case, as boom times returned swiftly.

Sauvignon blanc breakthrough

New Zealand is home to what many wine critics consider the world’s best Sauvignon blanc. Oz Clarke, a well-known British wine critic wrote in the 1990s that New Zealand Sauvignon blanc was "arguably the best in the world" (Rachman). Historically, Sauvignon blanc has been used in many French regions in both AOC and Vin de Pays wine. The most famous had been France’s Sancerre. It is also the grape used to make Pouilly Fumé. Following Robert Mondavi's lead in renaming Californian Sauvignon blanc Fumé Blanc (partially in reference to Pouilly Fumé and partially to denote the smokiness of the wine produced due to flinty soil properties and partial oak barrel ageing) there was a trend for oaked Sauvignon blanc in New Zealand during the late 1980s. Later the fashion for strong oaky overtones and also the name waned. In the 1980s, wineries in New Zealand, especially in the Marlborough region, began producing outstanding, some critics said unforgettable, Sauvignon blanc. "New Zealand Sauvignon blanc is like a child who inherits the best of both parents—exotic aromas found in certain Sauvignon blancs from the New World and the pungency and limy acidity of an Old World Sauvignon blanc like Sancerre from the Loire Valley" (Oldman, p. 152). One critic said that drinking one's first New Zealand Sauvignon blanc was like having sex for the first time (Taber, p. 244). "No other region in the world can match Marlborough, the northeastern corner of New Zealand's South Island, which seems to be the best place in the world to grow Sauvignon blanc grapes" (Taber, p. 244).

See also

• New Zealand cuisine
• Hokonui Hills, an area renowned for illicit alcohol production during the nineteenth century
• List of countries by alcohol consumption
• New Zealand alcohol licensing referendums 1894–1987

References

• Oldman, Mark. Oldman's Guide to Outsmarting Wine. NY: Penguin, 2004.
• Rachman, Gideon. "The globe in a glass". The Economist, 16 December 1999.
• Sogg, Daniel. "Standout Sauvignons", Wine Spectator, 10 November 2005, p. 108-111.
• Taber, George M. Judgment of Paris: California vs France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting that Revolutionized Wine. NY: Scribner, 2005.

Further reading

• Bollinger, Conrad Grog's Own Country: The Story of Liquor Licensing in New Zealand (Price Milburn Wellington, 1959: 2nd revised edition Minerva Auckland, 1967)

External links

• Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand
• Law Commission - "Review of Regulatory Framework for the Sale and Supply of Liquor"
• Alcohol Action NZ, lobby group
• The Demon Drink, Alcohol and Prohibition in New Zealand, Bulletin No 33, 2000 from Hocken Library, Dunedin
• Temperance and Prohibition in New Zealand (1930 history by Murray & Cocker)