Winemaker Notes
Pale straw. Lifted and pure aromas of fresh passionfruit, ripe citrus and lime. Notes of dried herbs, lemongrass, jalapeno and blackcurrant add pungency and intensity to the aromatics. Powerful, tight and elegant. This wine displays intense ripe fruit flavors of passionfruit juice and white peach, with citrus notes of lime and mandarin pith. The palate has intense concentration and generous weight, balanced by an underlying minerality and tight structure to shape a wine with lively tension and textural balance.
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Single Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc is concentrated, powerful and densely packed with flavor and acid. The wine is classy and robust with layers of lemongrass, tatami mat, yuzu, kiwi fruit, hints of passionfruit and leafy green herbs. It’s a really smart wine from a wonderfully detail-oriented producer in the Southern Valleys. Highly recommended.
-
Decanter
From Marlborough's first vineyard and winery, founded in 1873 – 100 years before the first commercial plantings took root. This is a intensely aromatic and concentrated wine, the rich, textural palate loaded with green mango, passionfruit, elderflower and lime leaf notes.
-
Wine Enthusiast
Peach, passion fruit and lemon-lime open this ripe, rounded wine, with white blossom and a grassy pungency below. The palate is broad in shape, dry and crunchy, with lovely citrus fruit, texture, length and heaps of refreshment
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.