Winemaker Notes
#62 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2025
The 2024 te Pa Sauvignon Blanc is beautifully perfumed with notes of white peach, guava, feijoa, fresh peas and nettle. The palate is super concentrated and precise, with zesty citrus and summer stone fruit flavors, complimented by subtle hints of jalapeno, sage, and wet river stones. This wine possesses crisp, refreshing acidity and a unique mineral saline finish.
A great match with all seafood, particularly shellfish. The crisp flavors work well with fresh summer salads or soft goat cheese.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Fruit-driven, enticing floral bouquet with apple, lime and peach notes. Dry and delicious with fresh acidity and appealing textured palate.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This 2024 Sauvignon Blanc is a blend of the Hillside and Beachside vineyards, and the wine has both minerality and salinity; it is crunchy and full of fruit flavor, kept on the rails by rocks, shells, phenolics and acid. It's excellent. The wine speaks of the places from whence it came. 13% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.
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James Suckling
Aromas of orchids, lemons and cut grass. The palate is light-bodied with a focused acidity, giving notes of quince, green pears and bell peppers. Fresh and pure.
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Wine Spectator
Appealing for its generous flavors of mandarin orange, passion fruit, lime zest and yuzu at the core. There's an appealingly fleshy, juicy texture and plenty of momentum on the finish, where lemon balm and ginger linger.
Nestled in the heart of Marlborough in the South Island of New Zealand, TE PA FAMILY VINEYARDS is not just a testament to the region's rich viticultural potential—it is a living tribute to a legacy that dates back 800 years. Owned by Haysley MacDonald, te Pa is more than a winery; it's a continuation of a familial saga that began with the earliest Maori settlers in the Wairau Bar. Haysley's ancestry imbues te Pa with a profound sense of place and history that is reflected in each selection of the winery's portfolio.
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.