Winemaker Notes
Pale straw with green highlights. Powerful gooseberry, white currant, red capsicum, passionfruit and lime peel aromas. Medium-bodied, with strong flavours of makrut lime, passionfruit, lemongrass and a refreshingly smooth, dry and persistent finish.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Attractive sauvignon blanc with flint, green-apple and lime aromas and flavors. Medium body with sliced melon and slate. Focused and pretty.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2024 Sauvignon Blanc leads with the typically leafy, green-gauge nose of coriander, crushed sea shells, green apple and brine. In the mouth, the wine is intensely tropical but tempered by a maritime freshness and levity through the finish. It's a breath of fresh air, this wine. 13.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.
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Vinous
If you’re looking for a bit of all the best bits of Marlborough, Astrolabe's 2024 Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough ticks the boxes in a harmonious, let-it-be way. It offers roundness and texture with fresh, balanced acidity and bright notes of pineapple, mint, passion fruit and lemon. This is really well put together. It's clear winemaker Simon Waghorn knows what he's doing.
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Wine Spectator
There's wonderful depth to the core of lemon sorbet and lime zest, with a touch of Asian pear. Shows off toasted herb notes of lemon basil, thyme and lemongrass alongside crushed rock minerality. Drink now. 5,000 cases imported.
Capable of a vast array of styles, Sauvignon Blanc is a crisp, refreshing variety that equally reflects both terroir and varietal character. Though it can vary depending on where it is grown, a couple of commonalities always exist—namely, zesty acidity and intense aromatics. This variety is of French provenance. Somm Secret—Along with Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc is a proud parent of Cabernet Sauvignon. That green bell pepper aroma that all three varieties share is no coincidence—it comes from a high concentration of pyrazines (herbaceous aromatic compounds) inherent to each member of the family.
An icon and leading region of New Zealand's distinctive style of Sauvignon blanc, Marlborough has a unique terroir, making it ideal for high quality grape production (of many varieties). Despite some common generalizations, which could be fairly justified given that Marlborough is responsible for 90% of New Zealand's Sauvignon blanc production, the wines from this region are actually anything but homogenous. At the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island, the vineyards of Marlborough benefit from well-draining, stony soils, a dry, sunny climate and wide temperature fluctuations between day and night, a phenomenon that supports a perfect balance between berry ripeness and acidity.
The region’s king variety, Sauvignon blanc, is beloved for its pungent, aromatic character with notes of exotic tropical fruit, freshly cut grass and green bell pepper along with a refreshing streak of stony minerality. These wines are made in a wide range of styles, and winemakers take advantage of various clones, vineyard sites, fermentation styles, lees-stirring and aging regimens to differentiate their bottlings, one from one another.
Also produced successfully here are fruit-forward Pinot noirs (especially where soils are clay-rich), elegant Riesling, Pinot gris and Gewürztraminer.