Greywacke Wild Sauvignon 2021 Marlborough New Zealand 750ml

Picture a shortcrust pie, loaded with quince and yellow apple, a layer of juicy gooseberries and topped with caramelised lemon slices. Served with a good dollop ofvanilla custard and sprinkled with lightly toasted fennel seeds. Complex and textural,Greywacke Wild Sauvignon is a feast for the senses. Fermented with wild yeast, it’s a hands-off style of Marlborough sauvignon blanc, with a succulent palate that finishes crisp and long.

Fruit was sourced from various vineyard sites in the Southern Valleys and the central Wairau Plains near Woodbourne. Soil types are predominantly the older, dense clayloams of the Southern Valleys, containing varying proportions of gravel. The sites around Woodbourne vary from young alluvial deposits full of greywacke river stones, to heavier clayloams closer to the mouth of the Southern Valleys. The vineyards were trained using two-four cane VSP (vertical shoot positioning) trellis.

Some vineyards were harvested by machine during cool (often cold) nighttime conditions and others by hand during the day. The grapes were lightly pressed to yield a
modest volume of high-quality juice, which was then cold-settled prior to racking into French oak barriques, a small percentage of which were new. The juice was allowed to undergo spontaneous indigenous yeast fermentation, the tail end of
which continued for well over six months. The wine had occasional lees stirring and
approximately two-thirds underwent malolactic fermentation. It was transferred out of oak prior to the following harvest and left on yeast lees for a further six months. The wine was  bottled inSeptember 2024, with alcohol 13.5%, pH 3.20 and acidity 6.2 g/l.

"Openly aromatic with both classic Sauvignon Blanc fruit – grassy and herbal with a hint of cassis leaf – but also a creamy/mealy impression allied to a stony note. This is a wine that you can enjoy now but which ages very well."

17.5 Points, Julia Harding MW⁠