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Vavasour is the founding winery of Marlborough’s Awatere Valley, with 196 acres of estate vineyards that produce acclaimed Sauvignon Blancs with distinctive oyster-shell minerality. Considered too extreme for winegrowing when Peter Vavasour boldly planted the region’s first vineyards in 1986, the Awatere Valley is a stunning land of rolling river benches, natural habitats and Tapuae-O-Uenuku, the 10,000 foot peak that frames and protects the region. Vavasour’s pioneering vineyards in the Awatere Valley ensured that today’s wines come from the valley’s oldest vines and best parcels and are informed by our hard-won knowledge of our terroir.

With a climate that is drier, cooler and windier weather than the neighboring Wairau Valley, Awatere vines are challenged by lower fertility soils, and produce small, concentrated berries. Low yields and artisan winemaking deliver a true expression of the valley’s climate and ancient soils: perfumed, textural, palate-led Sauvignon Blancs with creamy, rounded acidity and minerality.

A spirit of daring, veracity, and custodianship is as integral to our wines as the rooster crest featured on our label. Both are reflections of the Vavasour family’s storied past in Anglo-Norman England, where an early Vavasour forebear is believed to have been a taster for William the Conqueror. Today, led by winemaker Stu Marfell, born and raised in the Awatere Valley and recently named Winemaker of the Show at the 2018 New Zealand International Wine Awards, we continue to capture the extremes and nuances of the Awatere Valley in our wines. History, passion and a good amount of curiosity combine to make our winemaking a constant evolution, and our wines unmistakably Awatere.