Such wine-and-food epiphanies are becoming more and more commonplace in fast-changing present-day New Zealand.
Along with other former British colonies like Canada, Australia and South Africa, this heart-stoppingly beautiful island nation tolerated indifferent if not actually inedible cooking for most of the last century. Many of the half-million people who entered New Zealand between 1861 and 1881 were laborers accustomed to empty bellies in their European homelands. ("Hunger, the never-ending hunger," one of them recalled in his journal.) When they had the chance for the first time in their lives to eat as much as they wanted, they ate roast meat. A great deal of it.
Old habits do, indeed, die hard. In the year ended in March 2003, the Meat and Wool Innovation Economic Service estimates, New Zealanders ate 217 pounds of meat apiece. But the gastronomic revolution that transformed eating in other English-speaking countries in the 1980's and 90's, propelling London, Sydney and Vancouver into the ranks of the world's most celebrated restaurant cities, has reached far-off New Zealand at last, and roast mutton no longer rules here.
"The food and wine explosion in this country in the last few years has been astounding," an accomplished young chef named Alister Brown told me. "It's amazing how quickly we are catching up with the rest of the world."
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