This is a unique New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, the fruit for this wine is grown by Paddy and Anna Trolove at Taihoa Vineyard on Marlborough’s southern Kēkerengū coast. It is an outlier, both geographically and in a winemaking sense, to the typical sauvignon blanc wines of Marlborough; it is all about complexity, texture and age-worthiness.
In the glass, it is a lemon gold colour with aromas of guava, lime rind, papaya and light leesy nuances. The palate is powerful and concentrated with a tight mineral texture and flavours of melon, green peach and limoncello. This wine is already drinking well, but it will continue to evolve, increasing in complexity and roundness over several years. A natural partner for seafood —particularly oysters as well as soft white cheese, chicken and tarragon pie, and smoked eel.
Winemaker, Simon Waghorn describes the process of making this beautiful as such: “The grapes for my Taihoa Sauvignon blanc are grown with organic management and a low-cropping regime on a beautiful little terrace, high above the sea. We expose the fruit more to the sun by taking leaf away from around the bunches. When it gets to the right stage of ripeness, it’s hand-picked and taken as whole bunches back to the winery, where we press it in the champagne-style method to delicately get the free-run juice away. Cuvée juice is wild fermented in old 500-litre oak puncheons that have seen several years of chardonnay and then retained in barrel for extended maturation. I find that the wild yeast from this site has a very unique character. This sauvignon blanc is all about the wild yeast, high solids ferment, aging on yeast lees and a little bit of the nuances that come from the Kēkerengū area. I am crafting a wine with a very linear, focused structure around which I can build beautiful textures.”
