Greywacke Marlborough Wild Sauvignon Blanc 2023

Description

Dry, Mango, Oak

Aromas of rock melon, ginger, lime zest and toasted coconut abound. Lemon curd and tangelo flavours provide a juicy foundation to the expansive, full-flavoured palate. Lush and textural in style, the wine is well tempered by chalky oyster shell notes and a generous spine of acidity. A hands-off interpretation of Marlborough sauvignon blanc and an untamed, unique expression of the season and our Southern Valleys terroir.

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 clay-loams 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 clay-loams 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) night-time 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 in September 2024, with alcohol 13.5%, pH 3.20 and acidity 6.2 g/l.