Winemaker Notes
Invivo X, Sarah Jessica Parker is created with New Zealand-based Invivo….
The Invivo X, SJP award-winning wine range is a collaboration between Sarah Jessica Parker and New Zealand winery Invivo, featuring a Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand, a French Rosé and a New Zealand Pinot Noir. The partnership covers all aspects of creating the wines, with SJP being hands on from the label design to the winemaking and wine blending itself.
New Zealand’s Invivo is one of the country’s leading producers who own one of New Zealand’s oldest wineries, and Cofounders Tim Lightbourne and Rob Cameron taste and blend each new vintage with Sarah Jessica Parker so the wine is made to her taste preferences. One of the most awarded wine brands from New Zealand in recent years, Invivo X, SJP has clocked up more than 60 Gold medals and 90+ scores for both wines since its launch in 2019, including 93 points for its two latest vintages, and five 90+ points from Wine Spectator in a row for its first five vintages of the Sauvignon Blanc.
Sarah Jessica and Invivo Cofounders Tim and Rob created their first ever Pinot Noir together in July 2023. The long-term business partners blended some Pinot Noir from Marlborough in New Zealand together with a small amount of Pinot from Central Otago, which then spent eleven months in oak barrels. Sarah Jessica loved the fruit forward characters of the Marlborough Pinot coupled with the structure from the Pinot from Central Otago. By blending the two regions together, this delicious red wine has best of both worlds and stays with you long after first sip.
Sarah Jessica Parker, Cofounder of Invivo X, SJP, says: “It’s important to us that we continue to uphold the high level of quality that our customers have come to expect from us, but with experience also comes the ability to reflect on previous years and challenge ourselves to build on the structure, complexity and sophistication of our signature style with each new vintage. Our final 2023 Sauvignon Blanc blend has an incredible fragrance with perfectly balanced flavors of guava and citrus rind that are mouthwatering. We are excited for our customers around the world to try it, and we care deeply about their loyalty to this wine.”
Invivo Cofounder Rob Cameron says: “It’s so important that Sarah Jessica is involved in blending of the new vintage of Invivo X, SJP each year as she represents the tastes of our customers and what they are looking for in their glass” says Rob. “Sarah Jessica has developed a beautiful style of Sauvignon Blanc that is soft with a subtle oak influence, which is created by some late harvesting, a little bit of skin contact and using French barriques and hogsheads as well as non-barrel blonde oak.”
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
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.