Winemaker Notes
#3 Wine Spectator Top 10 Wine Values of 2023
This wine was created to redefine the Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc style. A real crowd pleaser, it is loved for its juicy, ripe flavors and restrained acidity. Each glass is brimming with succulent flavors of passionfruit, tropical fruit and citrus. The fruit flavor is balanced with crisp acidity and a distinct salty minerality, which combine to create a mouth-watering finish.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
This luscious version offers ripe peach, ruby grapefruit and passion fruit flavors that are mouthwatering, with details of sea salt, dried herbs and fresh ginger. Gains momentum and intensity on the long, expressive finish, where lemon verbena and green tea linger.
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James Suckling
Punchy passion fruit, lime zest, green apples and chalk aromas. Medium-bodied, fruity and fleshy with bright acidity. Ripe and fleshy finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
Currently quite young, this needs some time in glass to aerate if drinking now. Once those flinty reductive notes blow off, there's heaps of guava, passionfruit and lime to like. It's the palate that steps it up a notch, with mouthwatering acidity and succulent fruit.
Best Buy
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.