Mother Nature may have delivered incredibly small crops to New Zealand winemakers this year, but her tough love has its upsides,
as Joelle Thomson explains...

The 2021 New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs are rolling out – as the most planted grape in New Zealand today these wines are easy to come by and, in many cases, crazily affordable. 

Quality and style, however, are another matter. Both can be a rollercoaster of good, great or downright simple fruity wine best drunk in its youth. Which is not always a bad thing. 

While Sauvignon Blanc is plentiful, it is not always 100 per cent true to the label, owing to wine regulations in this country (and globally) that allow winemakers to add up to 15% of any other grape, vintage, or the same grape from a different region. This is known as “the 85% rule”. 

This regulation can have many positives. It has enabled wineries in Marlborough to grow faster than their natural capacity would have allowed, had they been limited to using grapes solely from their own region. And in tough years it can be helpful to be able to use
a portion of grapes grown in a region where the weather was warmer. This can mitigate hard edges from less ripe grapes if the vintage was cool, for example. 

There is also the potential to beef up a less characterful wine by adding something with more personality: a touch of Gewürztraminer to Pinot Gris, for instance, was common practice at one stage. Or, if you accidentally planted a quirky grape and found yourself unsure of what to do with it, blending it into a better known, more popular wine could solve the problem quick smart. 

However, the 85% rule can also be a convenient way of boosting production without declaring exactly what grapes are in a wine, or where they came from. 

This has been an issue for Marlborough, the world’s biggest region for Sauvignon Blanc, because there is, simply put, more Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc produced than there are grapes grown in the region to make it. 

For this reason, a bunch of winemakers in Marlborough created a trademark to protect the authenticity of their wines. Authenticity in and of itself does not ensure quality or dictate style, but it can be suggestive of both these things when used by those focused on high quality. 

The authenticity logo in question is Appellation Marlborough Wine, or AMW for short. And it’s never been more apt than now, says Matthew Fox, viticulturist for Rapaura Springs. “The wines from our 2021 vintage are by far the most concentrated and powerful examples of Sauvignon Blanc that I’ve tried to date. The quality across the board is outstanding. It’s an exceptional year to be a consumer buying Sauvignon.”  

Catalina Sounds winemaker, Matthew Ward, predicts that the 2021 Sauvignon Blancs will enhance Marlborough’s reputation internationally as a great wine region as vintages of this quality don’t come often, and will give wine drinkers a snapshot of what a great and challenging vintage can taste like.  

“The quality of fruit from 2021 has created wines with great weight, concentration and balance. This is because of the record low crops we got.” 

It’s not only the Marlborough region whose winemakers experienced low crops this year. Martinborough, and the Wairarapa as a whole, had grapes that were so tiny it was difficult to see how juice could be pressed from some of them at all. And other regions were also similarly afflicted. 

Mother Nature can be harsh, but the flipside is the high quality due to the concentrated flavour. As winemaker Jules Taylor says of the very small grapes from 2021: “The fruit had great concentration, we just wish there was more to go round.”

You’ll find the AMW logo on the back label of wines produced by its members who use 100% Marlborough grown grapes in their wines. 

Find out more at appellationmarlboroughwine.co.nz 

Joelle Thomson is an Journalist, wine writer and author.

joellethomson.com