Hawke's Bay's high points

You have to visit Hawke’s Bay on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island to realise just how special Bilancia’s La Collina is. In the past when I’d tasted it I suspected it was just another NZ Syrah with a nice Italian name. But la collina means the hill and there seems to be only one of them in Hawke’s Bay, an enormous plain of vines with the exception of Roy’s Hill around which the Gimblett Gravels’ 800 ha (1,980 acres) of neat, flat vineyards curve.

Warren Gibson (seen...