Uncorked: New Zealand ideal for growing sauvignon blanc

Tom Dixon has his hands full.

The Villa Maria winemaker just bought a new house. He and his wife are expecting twins. And harvest in New Zealand is coming up.

To top things off, the cellar has been buzzing lately as the team has worked to empty its tanks to make space for the upcoming harvest. Dixon said a comfortable growing season should lead to higher yields than the past two years and excellent quality.

As sauvignon blanc has become the New Zealand calling card, Dixon has relished the ideal growing conditions his vineyards offer. The New Zealand winery kicks off a wide array of sauvignon blanc tastes from around the world.

“Climate and conditions lead sauvignon blanc to being so unique here,” Dixon said. “The flagship varietal that we grow here is due to the geography, with warm days and cool nights, we get great ripeness and freshness.”

Any challenges lately have come on the supply side, just like other wineries across the world battling the grip of COVID-19, which finally seems to have eased. It hit the labor force hard in New Zealand.

The Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc 2021 had a grassy nose with green melon, lemon zest, lime zest and a crispy, acidic finish.

Even though sauvignon blanc has become the region’s flagship wine, Dixon said winemakers are “pragmatic to hedge bets with sauvignon and tinker with other things on the side.”

“We need to continue to explore our sub regions and get the best out of those sub regions – we have to continue doing that,” Dixon said. “We are playing around with producing an alternative style of sauvignon blanc – a barrel-fermented style. Played around with skin-fermented to great effect, too. We are learning things every single vintage, and that slowly creeps into the more conventional wines we do over the years.”

Because it’s a wine region not bound by the staid rigors of tradition, there’s an adventurous, exploratory side to the industry.

“The age of our industry is a benefit,” Dixon said. “We haven’t been bound to what we can plant like some Old World sites in Europe. We are free to explore different varieties, where some wineries can’t do that in other places.”

For Dixon, barrel fermentation adds a textual influence that creates a significant mouthfeel. Mix in the juice coming in contact with the skins, and the impact of the wild yeasts on the wine is further enhanced.

Like other colleagues around the world, Dixon is in pursuit of a reduced carbon footprint.

“Our sustainability focus is something we are pushing for,” Dixon said on a Zoom call. “We cut back our water use and get vineyard ecosystems healthy. We’ve been doing these things for a long time. If you just look through harvest date and rainfall records, you can see climate is changing.”

CALIFORNIA

Jesse Katz used the coldest site possible: Dry Stack Vineyard in Sonoma’s Bennett Valley AVA for Aperture Cellars Sauvignon Blanc 2020 ($40). Coastal air flow and persistent fog through the growing season allow for ripening two to four weeks after other sauvignon blanc sites. The fruit hangs onto its acidity, but Katz said it sheds some of the “green grassy style and takes on more complex flavors of white peach, honeydew, citrus and minerality.”

He said it’s “unlike any sauvignon blanc he’s ever had,” and he took inspiration for a unique barrel program from Chateau Haut-Brion, the oldest of Bordeaux, France’s first growths.

Katz aged the wine for six to nine months in new French oak, once-used French oak and neutral French oak. Just 10% of the new oak were special barrels, with toasted acacia heads and French oak staves.

“This gives a subtle, but impactful, lift to the spice and minerality of the wine,” Katz said. “But, a little goes a long way.”

Veteran winemaker Cary Gott, a fourth-generation winegrower and winemaker, has a lush, rich wine with the Davis Estates Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc 2019 ($39). With pear, fruit cocktail and a collection of fruit-friendly citrus notes, the impact of sunshine on Napa Valley vineyards comes through.

Just 10% of the wine saw time in neutral French oak barrels for an added mouthfeel.

Tropical fruit, Meyer lemon and a racy acidity, which balanced the fruit flavors so well, made Charles Krug Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc 2020 ($20) a great bargain.

Banshee Sonoma County Sauvignon Blanc 2020 ($22) blended vineyards in the Russian River and Sonoma valleys, and had more of a creamy mouthfeel than the others. The lemon and grapefruit flavors gave way to a fun lemon meringue feel in the midpalate.

Fresh-cut grass, wildflowers and a fuller mouthfeel than most that was chased away by a zesty lime finish highlighted the Clay Shannon Betsy Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc 2020 ($30), another example of the varietal’s versatility.

Also on the fine line between grapefruit tart, green flavors and citrus fruit is Justin Sauvignon Blanc 2020 ($16). It’s loaded with refreshing acidity, and would be great with soft, white cheeses or spicy food.

SOUTH AFRICA

Southern Right Sauvignon Blanc 2021 ($17.99) donates a portion of each bottle served to the rare whales from Walker Bay from which it takes its name. With flavors of pineapple, mango, fresh-cut herbs and a whiff of ocean breeze, it had the most fruit of the three South African wines sampled.

“We have always aimed at restraining excessive varietal character and building length, layered texture, and a sense of “minerality” and “salinity,” said Southern Right’s Anthony Hamilton Russell, who in 1991 took over the business his father started in 1975. “If prominent varietal fruit is what is wanted, then New Zealand has to be the choice.”

“We don’t work as reductively as many, as we are not looking to capture as much of a lifted pyrazine character as we can. We pick fully ripe for complexity and texture, and to move away from excessive greener lifted aromas and flavors.”

The usage of an endemic vineyard yeast has led to slower, wilder fermentations, and Hamilton said has reduced fruit forwardness and also furthered the wine’s “texture and minerality.”

With vineyard sites on two different soil types, Hamilton Russell said quartzitic sandstone-derived soils provide “more vertical linearity and lifted aromatics,” and iron-clay, rich shale-derived soils give “texture, length, less dramatic fruit and our signature minerality.”

With zesty lime, jalapeño and parsley flavors, the Lomond Sauvignon Blanc 2021 ($17.99) embraced the herbal, green notes as it slowly ripened on Africa’s southernmost tip of Cape Agulhas.

There’s pineapple that’s paired with intriguing resin, rosemary and green fruit notes in the Rustenberg Stellenbosch Sauvignon Blanc 2021 ($13.99).

• James Nokes has been tasting, touring and collecting in the wine world for several years. Email him at jamesnokes25@yahoo.com.