WineNZ Summer 18-19 (1)
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sauvignon blanc | tastings<br />
Professor Xue Yang struts her stuff.<br />
Top sauvvies<br />
Words by Paul Taggart<br />
The New Zealand sauvignon blanc industry has divided<br />
into four strands in recent years.<br />
The first produces heavily<br />
cropped, bulk exported<br />
wine mainly for overseas<br />
supermarkets, the second<br />
generally makes better<br />
quality wine, which is<br />
bottled in New Zealand, the third produces<br />
aged premium wine. Finally we have<br />
sauvignon blanc produced in places other<br />
than Marlborough.<br />
Although this tasting is open to allcomers,<br />
thankfully the producers from<br />
the first category rarely enter. They may<br />
be too busy filling their bladders, making<br />
up fantasy Kiwi winery names to put on<br />
their labels or diluting their Marlborough<br />
wine with juice from elsewhere in a bid<br />
to hit UK supermarkets’ low price points.<br />
They also generally bottle off-shore and<br />
their products don’t make it back to<br />
New Zealand.<br />
The second group contains the bottles<br />
most wine people care about – produced by<br />
small and medium businesses which take<br />
an interest in cropping levels, sub-regions,<br />
their reputations and their customers. These<br />
are the wineries the Marlborough industry<br />
was built around before it was hijacked by<br />
overseas-owned mega companies.<br />
Number three – the producers of premium<br />
wines – is a tiny segment, and we’ll come<br />
back to them at the end of this tasting, as<br />
they deserve a sub-section of their own.<br />
This group may – or may not – provide a<br />
future direction for some in the industry.<br />
Finally – the non-Marlborough wines.<br />
Having staged quite a few sauvignon blanc<br />
tastings for this magazine, it is fairly clear<br />
to me that some Nelson wines can compete<br />
well against their neighbours – with a<br />
couple of Nelsonians again up among the<br />
Marlborough elite in this tasting.<br />
However, while we have had entrants from<br />
regions further away from Marlborough<br />
than Nelson – namely Hawke’s Bay,<br />
Waipara and Central Otago, they rarely<br />
make it on to the podium. It is not that<br />
they’re bad wines, just that they haven’t<br />
been sprinkled with the Marborough pixie<br />
dust. No pixie dust, no gold medals.<br />
So the first section of this series of<br />
tastings is the important one – probably<br />
our most important tasting of the year.<br />
The classification is sauvignon blancs<br />
from 20<strong>18</strong> – a year where producers had<br />
a few weather issues, but not enough for<br />
it to have a major impact on quality. We<br />
ended up with three five-star wines. The<br />
three businesses cocerned are all big and<br />
successful wineries, but are also all still<br />
family concerns.<br />
Top of the heap was Marisco, which is<br />
consistently among the leaders in these<br />
events, but this time came out of the taste<br />
off with the other two five-star wines as<br />
a clear winner. I great effort from one of<br />
our most consistent high-quality wineries.<br />
www.winenzmagazine.co.nz<br />
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