Tasting Notes
Our 2011 vintage has benefited from an excellent growing and harvesting season to produce a 'top' wine displaying a sparkling pale straw green colour and an excellent full palate. The warm days and cool nights of Marlborough have produced the regions typical Sauvignon Blanc, which exhibits aromas of passionfruit, citrus, gooseberry and dried herbs. The palate is fruit driven with tropical and citrus flavours producing a long clean finish, which is fresh and crisp. Fabulous to drink with friends!
Food Matching
Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc is perfect with fresh oysters drizzled with a citrus vinaigrette, or try it with homemade spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce, prawns, garlic and chili. Rest assured this superb wine will always marry with a summer salad or grilled vegetables and a herb dressing. Enjoy this drop now, or over the next one to two years.
Viticulture and Winemaking
The 2011 vintage in Marlborough continued on the fine run of vintages from this region. Bud burst was slightly earlier than 2010 due to an unseasonally warm September. Thankfully, given this early start, we experienced minimal frost issues, but there were a number of cool nights to keep everyone on edge. Fruit set was slightly above the average, leading to slightly higher than normal crop levels. Some careful fruit thinning early in the season brought the vines into perfect balance and also enabled us to avoid any disease pressure. By late January the summer had cooled considerably, and even though we experienced rain leading into March, the grapes remained in perfect condition. By mid to late March, we started to experience those typical cool autumn nights and sunny cloudless days that we've come to expect in Marlborough, allowing the moderately cropped vines to reach full ripeness and be harvested right on schedule in early April.
The majority of fruit came from young vines at low cropping levels from the Omaka Valley and supported by fruit from the Awatere and Wairau Valleys. The grapes were machine harvested early in the morning to preserve their flavour then destemmed, crushed and lightly pressed with minimal skin contact. The clear juice was then fermented at low temperatures in stainless steel tanks with selected yeast strains to preserve the inherent fruit flavours. Following fermentation, the wine was left on light lees to enhance texture and complexity for 2 months before blending and prepared for bottling.