Riesling, Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris

Riesling, gewürztraminer and pinot gris arrive together on tasting sheets because they share one habit: they smell before they speak. Winemakers call them the aromatic whites, and in Marlborough's cool valley they make some of the region's most rewarding and least expensive bottles. This guide sorts the three apart, scent by scent and style by style, with the dryness scales, the serving temperatures and the food matches that let each one show its best.

Riesling: the precise one

Riesling is transparent in a way few grapes are: it tastes of the ground and the year without make up. Young Marlborough riesling runs lime zest, green apple and white flowers, with a acid backbone that borders on severe and, in the best sites, a mineral, almost salty finish the region's proximity to the sea may explain. With age the wine's third act appears, the honeyed, toast and eventually petrol like development that riesling collectors follow vintage by vintage; the cellaring guide treats it as the region's best long term white after the sweet styles.

The category's one confusion is sweetness, which labels solve unevenly. The International Riesling Foundation's scale, printed on many bottles as dry to sweet, helps; so does the simple arithmetic of alcohol, with dry table riesling typically around 11 to 12.5 percent and the sweeter styles lower, their sugar unfermented. Dry riesling suits shellfish, ceviche and anything with lime; off dry and sweeter versions are the classic answers to spice, from Thai to Indian, because sugar and acid together tame heat the way nothing else does. Sweetness in a good riesling is a structure, not a dessert; the wine stays refreshing precisely because the acid runs alongside it.

Gewürztraminer: the loud one

Gewürztraminer is the easiest blind tasting guess in wine: rose petal, lychee, ginger and baking spice, a perfume that fills the room before the bottle is poured. The grape is pink skinned, low in acid by aromatic standards and prone to building alcohol quickly, so the winemaker's job is picking early enough to keep freshness while letting the signature scent develop. Marlborough's cool season helps on both counts, and the regional style is spicier and more restrained than Alsace's broad warmth, though still unmistakably the variety.

Drink gewürztraminer young. Its perfume is the most perishable of the three, and beyond four or five years the flowers go soapy and the palate heavy; this is the one aromatic to buy by the recent vintage, checked against the year by year account. Serve it at 8 to 10 degrees with the food its home range suggests: Munster cheese, duck, Thai basil dishes, charcuterie with spice. Gewürztraminer has a historical footnote in this valley as well; it was among the varieties the early boutique estates planted in the 1990s alongside riesling and pinot gris, when the region's second act was being written.

Pinot gris: the generous one

Pinot gris, the same grape as pinot grigio under its French name, makes a fuller, softer, lower acid white that Marlborough reads in two registers. Picked early and pressed off the skins quickly, it gives a pale, crisp, pear and citrus wine for early drinking; given skin contact or picked riper, it turns coppery, textural and spicy, closer to Alsace's model. The two bottles sit under the same name on the shelf, and the label's words, gris versus grigio style, early picked, whole bunch pressed, announce which is which.

Its generosity is its identity: almond, pear, white peach and sometimes ginger, a roundness that suits it to the foods sharper whites cut through. Roast chicken, pork, mushroom risotto and mild curries are its ground, and it is the aromatic to pour for guests who claim not to like dry wine. Keep it two to four years; the style's low acid means it does not build with time the way riesling does.

Telling them apart in the glass

A three glass flight makes the lesson permanent. Riesling's colour stays palest and greenest; its nose is citrus and flower; its entry is acid first, fruit second. Gewürztraminer deepens to gold quickly and smells of a florist's shop and a spice rack in one; its entry is fruit and spice, acid barely leading. Pinot gris sits between in colour, smells of orchard fruit and almond, and enters soft and round. Serve all three colder than chardonnay, warmer than sparkling: 8 to 10 degrees from a short stay in the fridge, in a tulip shaped white glass.

Where the three grow and what the year does

All three varieties prefer the cooler, more sheltered parts of the region: the river terrace sites of the Wairau floodplain, the Waihopai and the higher Awatere, where the season stretches long enough for aromatics without the sugars running away. The Awatere in particular has become the aromatics' second home: its cold, wind slowed ripening keeps riesling fine and pinot gris lean, and several of the country's most focused aromatic whites now carry the valley's name. The vintage moves them as it moves everything here: warm years push the thiols and the ripeness, cool years sharpen the acid and hold the alcohol down, and the small frost thinned years concentrate both scent and structure.

The vintage report guide teaches the reading; the geography guide and the soils guide carry the ground; and the late harvest, botrytised chapter of riesling's story belongs with the sweet wines of the sparkling and specialty guide.