This 2018 Sauvignon Blanc is a blend from 3 special vineyards in two different sub-regions of Marlborough. Two of the vineyards are in the upper Awatere Valley – Trelawne Farm and Shamrock, and the third is our certified organic home block here in Renwick on the southern side of the Wairau Valley. The growing conditions in the Awatere are characterised by cooler temperatures and slower ripening than in the Wairau, which is all important for flavour development and ripe acidity. The wines from this sub-region tend to be more restrained in their youth but have great texture, structure and longevity. Our Te Whare Ra home block experiences the warmer days of the Wairau Valley and a bigger diurnal range. These climatic factors combined with our clay loam soil here, results in wines which have great texture and fleshiness and are characterised by riper tropical notes with stone-fruit with a lovely line of minerality.
Winemaking: The Awatere parcels of fruit for this wine were select machine picked and the Wairau part was hand-picked and hand-sorted. The free-run and soft pressings parcels were combined for fermentation. The majority of the parcels underwent slow, cool fermentation in stainless, with 8% of the blend fermented at warmer temps in older French oak demi-muids. All parcels spent time on fine lees, post ferment for texture. This wine has not been fined and is suitable for vegans and vegetarians and anyone else who loves authentic, hand-made wines.
Wine: Our 2018 release shows distinctive Awatere characters of guava, white currant, and elderflower coupled with lovely ripe passionfruit & tropical notes and hints of basil and lime from the Wairau fruit. These follow through to the palate - which is fine and soft with loads of fleshy fruit balanced by a ripe, juicy acidity and lingering minerality. There is real fruit weight here and that is complimented by lovely texture from the time on lees and the barrel parcels - It is utterly delicious!
Alc 13.2% vol pH 3.37 TA 6.8g/L
Vintage: The growing season preceding the 2018 vintage was one out of the box, with the warmest December on record and a very warm and sunny January. This was followed up by the warmest February ever on record, needless to say this was a great start to the season for vintage 2018. It wasn’t all smooth sailing though, as there were some potential challenges as we closed in on harvest, with cyclonic activity in the Pacific that brought some significant rains to the region. But the great start to the summer meant that we had really good flavour development quite early. This crucial element, coupled with very careful canopy management meant that our vines produced ripe flavours and that we could pick pretty early. The harvest
started in mid-March and was very compact and fast with all the fruit into the winery by the first week in April. The resultant wines display great fleshiness with purity of fruit, bright aromatics and ripe, juicy acidity. This 2018 Sauvignon Blanc is drinking well now but we are consciously making a style of Sauvignon that will benefit from some bottle age, so it will also develop with careful cellaring for 2-3 years. - Anna Flowerday, TWR
Anna Flowerday hails from McLaren Vale and kicked off her career there amid a thoroughly talented pack of young winemakers in the mid-1990s. She worked for Hardys for seven years all up, culminating in an aromatically formative stint at Leasingham in Clare Valley. It was during her time at Hardys that she met and fell in love with Jason Flowerday, a third-generation viticulturalist from Marlborough. Eventually they struck out together and in 2003 bought Te Whare Ra, home to one of the oldest vineyards in Marlborough, originally planted in 1979. Together they manage the estate with a combination of organic and biodynamic practices and have cemented this region's reputation not only as an impeccable source of aromatic whites but also as a force to be reckoned with for both Pinot Noir and Syrah.