I’ve just returned from New Zealand, where I was lucky enough to attend a Pinot Noir conference in the Central Otago, which, against steep global competition, qualifies as one of the most beautiful wine regions on earth. I’m meant to report on Pinot, and I will; but another interesting story arose during my explorations of Pinot that has nudged that variety gently from the center floodlight, for now.
After the conference I traveled extensively in Central (as the locals call it) and then on to most of the major wine regions in the country, many of which make Pinot Noir. But no matter how good their Pinot is, all of them, from the biggest players to the smallest boutique wineries, seem to make a Sauvignon Blanc. In fact for most producers, making Sauvignon was obligatory: if you’re from New Zealand, you have to come to market with a ‘Savvy,’ whether you want to or not.
I found this curious; why bother? I wondered. It turns out that for many, there’s no choice. As New Zealand’s most successful export wine, Sauvignon Blanc is wildly distinctive, with pungent, arresting aromatics and nervy acidity; the distinctive aromas, starting at gooseberry and lime and glancing off more outré aromas of tomato leaf, capsicum, even cat pee, have become a hallmark style, irrevocably associated with the country.
To some extent, this is attributable to the success of the Marlborough contingent – the Cloudy Bays, Villa Marias, Kim Crawfords and Brancotts — all have done a bang-up job of making distinctive wine and then marketing it skillfully, such that the country and the grape variety are practically synonymous. In fact, said most winemakers, the association is so powerful that if you don’t have an SB, you won’t find distribution in the American market.
So a number of interesting trends have emerged as wineries cope with this reality. Some wineries, no matter where they’re from, make a Sauvignon from Marlborough. Often these wines are grown by a subcontractor and even made by a Marlborough winemaker, then shipped in bulk to points beyond to be bottled at the home winery. While this is probably not an ideal arrangement, it does meet the market requirement.
Most, of course, make Sauvignons in their home region. But some have decided, for better or worse, to try to emulate the essential character of Marlborough Sauvignon in a wine made from their own fruit, trying to capture the grassy, herbal notes in one pick, then to pick for citrusy notes in another, and hope that they’ve not lost too much acidity by the time their final pick rolls around. This has led to predictably mixed results; some of these wines can be passably good, but they rarely show the harmony inherent in a good wine.
Still others are taking an entirely different route. Rather than make a ‘Marlborough’ wine in Martinborough or Hawke’s Bay, they’ve been making Sauvignon on their own terms, reflecting their specific region and its terroirs, echoing the classic elements of cool climate white wine but carving out new styles, new variations on a theme. What’s emerging is a new breed of Sauvignon; the ‘classic’ New Zealand SB can no longer be thought of as just one style, but many.
Marlborough remains ground zero, both for Sauvignon Blanc and for the iconic Sauvignon Blanc style. And of course, there are many great wines being produced there. But Marlborough style has inspired its share of cheap pretenders. The rush to fill demand has resulted in dozens of concocted mass production brands, tended by tractor, harvested mechanically, and made in a cookie-cutter style that has done no favors for the image of New Zealand SB globally.
These are cynical wines, designed to hit a note or two of citrus and grass, followed by a massive whack of sweet sugary ripeness, which is then shored up by an aggressive acidity, the type that comes from a bag and not a grape.
Despite its hand in creating a caricature, Marlborough is still the home of some truly great wines. Cloudy Bay’s flagship 2008 Sauvignon is as poised and elegant as it’s ever been, as is Villa Maria’s 2008 flagship Private Bin. As if to break character, both of these wineries are now making alternative bottlings of Sauvignon, as well. Cloudy Bay has a fully barrel-fermented, SB called Te Koko, which is fermented naturally and which goes through partial malolactic fermentation, a wine that exhibits exotic notes of vanilla and toast to mingle with a riper, more tropical fruit style. Villa Maria, meanwhile, makes about five different Sauvignons (it too has a full-on, barrel-fermented wine, R&D, which is not imported here) expressing single vineyards, extended lees contact, and significantly lower yields. Yet another winery I visited, Spy Valley (the name comes from the radar station up the valley from them) has sufficiently reduced its yields to reveal new levels of concentration, and a bracing natural minerality that goes missing in many Marlborough Sauvignons.
As you depart the South Island and head north, you find more wineries subtly departing from the iconic style. North of Wellington on the gravelly river terraces of Martinborough, they’re better known for silky, complex Pinot Noir; but the Sauvignon there is unique and impressive. These white wines tend to be a little richer, more concentrated, with a mineral, textural component that grounds the herbal elements more firmly than the Sauvignons of Marlborough.
That’s true of the Sauvignon from Palliser, with broad, slightly riper flavors that evoke citrus, but with a hint of orange and melon to go with lemon and herbs. The 2008 Sauvignon from Ata Rangi doesn’t hide its melon-like ripeness, with a broad middle palate-weight to which a tiny percentage of barrel-fermented juice contributes; still it manages to finish with a pleasing herbal bitterness. Meanwhile the 2008 Craggy Range Sauvignon from Te Muna Road might have been the most tightly coiled of all the New Zealand whites I tasted, with an uncanny stone dust grip to accompany its flavors of scallion and lime.
Traveling north, the wineries of Hawke’s Bay can’t pretend to make Marlborough Sauvignon — it’s much too warm and dry to pull off that style (they’re better known for their Chardonnays). To its credit though, the region is plainly carving out its own style; many are employing a small percentage of barrel-fermentation on their juice to broaden the palate — a practice which, ironically, contributes to their minerality. That’s the case with Stone Paddock Sauvignon Blanc from Paritua, which has a palate weight derived in part from ten to fifteen percent of barrel-fermentation. The wine stays firm and limey on the palate, however, and the modest oak tones renders the fruit more in the spectrum of nectarine.
Perhaps the most impressive Hawke’s Bay Sauvignons I tasted were from a fairly new, improbably named winery called Elephant Hill, which turns out three SBs from seaside vineyards on the southern swale of Hawke’s Bay. All evoke the Loire in their fine mineral tones (it comes as no surprise that winemaker Steve Skinner spent time making wine there, with Pascal Jolivet). But the Reserve, in particular, aged in neutral puncheons at the end of fermentation, evokes that fine talclike minerality found in great Sancerre; the fruit in evidence was riper, no doubt, more about apple than citrus. There was no gooseberry, no grass, little in the way of green aromatic herbs — indeed, aside from the cool climate tones, few of the classic markers that indicate New Zealand were present. Yet it was thrilling, racy wine nevertheless, and a clear indication that in the right circumstances, New Zealand Sauvignon can step out of its own shadow when it needs to.