Why Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc is such a success

Back in 1973, New Zealand’s wine scene was very different. Many of the vineyards were planted with hybrids, the most prevalent vinifera grapes were Müller-Thurgau and Palomino, and fortifieds played a significant role in the market. But things were changing. US drinks company Seagram had just bought a 40% stake in leading winery Montana whose founder, Frank Yukich, was looking for new vineyard land.

A chance meeting with 29-year-old scientist Wayne Thomas, from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, was to prove pivotal. Thomas impressed Yukich, who hired him on the spot. It was Thomas’s suggestion that they should consider Marlborough, which at the time had no vines, but seemed to be ideal for viticulture. Yukich listened and asked Thomas to prepare a report, which he duly did.

Marlborough expands

Soon after, Yukich and Thomas, along with Frank’s brother Maté and Montana national vineyard manager Jim Hamilton, were driving around Marlborough with land agent John Marris. In the space of ten days, they purchased nine farms totalling 1,173ha at an average price of NZ$1,146 per hectare, double the going rate. This was equal to 80% of New Zealand’s vineyard area at the time. The first plantings, in August 1973, weren’t Sauvignon Blanc, but Müller-Thurgau and Palomino, with some Cabernet Sauvignon. Sauvignon arrived two years later, and Montana’s first varietal Sauvignon Blanc was from the 1979 vintage.

That same year vineyards expanded into the Rapaura area after extensive lobbying by Phil Rose, a farmer who wanted to plant grapes. This opened up the spread of vineyards into the northern side of the Wairau Valley. The story of Marlborough was becoming one of contract growers working for the three big companies at the time: Montana, Penfolds and Corbans.

Robert Hille, one of the early growers, first planted his vineyard at the top of the Brancott Valley in 1982. “It was a very severe drought and there was a lot of wind,” he says. “A cold wind blew every day from the south-west. I had to have a jersey on in the middle of summer.” The new region was much smaller than it is now. “Montana’s vineyards were well established, and there was a moderate number of contract growers. I used to go to meetings of growers, and I probably knew everyone in the room by first name. There might have been 20 or 30 people.” There was a lot of discussion about pricing. “It was unbelievable,” recalls Hille. “We’d be harvesting grapes one year and still hadn’t settled on the price for the previous year. It was mayhem, looking back.”

The turning point came in the mid-1980s in the UK, when the 1985 Hunter’s Fumé Blanc was voted the most popular wine at the 1986 Sunday Times Wine Club Vintage Festival. Then came Cloudy Bay, the now iconic Marlborough winery started by David Hohnen, then of Cape Mentelle in Western Australia’s Margaret River region. In 1985 he produced the first Cloudy Bay Sauvignon from 40 tonnes of grapes trucked up to be made in Gisborne by Kevin Judd. The 1986 vintage made it to the UK and was such a hit that the ensuing export demand for this remarkable style of Sauvignon turned out to be the making of Marlborough, and established New Zealand as a wine exporting country.

James Healy, then a winemaker with Cloudy Bay and now at Dog Point, arrived in Marlborough from Auckland in 1990 with his wife Wendy and four children. “It was a bit of an adjustment,” he recalls, “but in retrospect was the best thing we could have done.” The vineyard area then was a seventh of what it is now. “In those days you could visit any number of orchards and pick berry fruit, pears, apples, peaches and the best nectarines,” he says. “Today it’s impossible to find an orchard. In 1990 wine was still locally looked at as being a bit ‘out there’, but not now. I view it as a true success story where a great locally identifiable flavour has been made available to anyone who is interested and I think that is a great achievement.”

Today, Marlborough produces 77% of all of New Zealand’s wine from 27,000ha of vines, according to 2019 figures. In terms of the weight of grapes harvested, 89% of the region’s production is Sauvignon Blanc (272,000 tonnes), with Pinot Noir (4% or 12,300 tonnes) in second place. It is a region dominated by growers: 509 grape growers provide 73% of the region’s grapes.

The geography

The main part of Marlborough’s vineyard is in the Wairau Valley, a long, broad plain heading west (inland) from the coast. To the north is the Richmond Range; to the south the Wither Hills, which frame the valley quite nicely. The main Wairau Valley has alluvial soils, with the structure varying from big river stones to fine silt, often over small scales. This area typically makes pungent tropical Sauvignons with grapefruit and sweet tropical fruit character.

The Lower Wairau/Dillons Point to the east is exposed to the sea. This drained swamp land has fertile soils, and the vigorous vines with lush canopies produce heroic yields of grapes that make thiol-rich Sauvignon. Then there’s Rapaura, with stony riverbed soils with flood deposits and some finer silts. This warm subregion makes citrus and grapefruit-dominated Sauvignons. Northbank is between the Wairau River and the Richmond Range. This cooler area makes Sauvignon with more green herbaceous notes.

Ben Morven, Brancott, Fairhall, Omaka and Waihopai are the southern valleys, nestling into the Wither Hills. The clay-rich soils have more water-holding capacity, and Pinot Noir and Chardonnay do well here.

The other main region in Marlborough is the Awatere Valley, which is the coldest, driest and windiest place in Marlborough. It was first pioneered by Vavasour in the late 1980s and really got going when Montana planted its large Seaview Vineyard here. But the largest player is Yealands, which has more than 1,000ha near the coast. Sauvignon from here has more green character, frequently showing tomato leaf, nettle, green pepper, lime and lemongrass characters.

Sauvignon Blanc

The success of Sauvignon – which dominates the region, accounting for almost 90% of plantings – is due to its unique flavour profile. The typical Marlborough character is one of green notes well integrated with citrus brightness and exotic tropical high notes, all kept laser sharp by high acidity. New Zealand wine scientists have discovered that the region makes wines with very high levels of two groups of impact compounds, methoxypyrazines and thiols. Methoxypyrazines are responsible for green flavours: green pepper, tomato leaf, grassiness while thiols are responsible for passionfruit, grapefruit and tropical fruit aromatics. So good Marlborough Sauvignon is about greenness allied to thiol aromatic interest. This is what sets it apart. Sauvignon Blanc has three thiols that are important in varietal aroma: 3MH (grapefruit, passionfruit skin/stalk), 3MHA (sweet-sweaty passionfruit) and 4MMP (broom, cat’s pee).

Winemaking

The majority of Sauvignon Blanc is made in a similar way, with machine-picked fruit pressed and fermented at low temperature in stainless steel tanks. Helen Morrison, chief winemaker at Villa Maria’s Marlborough winery, describes how the company produces its Private Bin and Cellar Selection Sauvignon Blancs. “We use the Awatere vineyards to provide greener flavours and more prominent acidity, whereas Wairau generally adds thiols and citrus profile,” she explains. “Both valleys are kept separate for fermentation.” After pressing, Villa Maria uses a technique called continuous flotation to clear the must ready for fermentation. As opposed to static settling, this uses a flotation tank in which nitrogen is bubbled in from the bottom and causes the juice lees to move to the top where they are skimmed off. “We have found this to be an exceptional tool to enhance quality in challenging seasons,” says Morrison. It allows them to get the clear juice fermenting quickly and is used by most large wineries in the region. Fermentations are with selected yeasts. “We use a thiol-generating yeast for Wairau vineyards,” she says, “whereas we use a more textural or neutral yeast for Awatere so it enhances minerality or salinity.” The final wine is usually roughly a 50-50 split between both valleys. “At our Sauvignon Blanc assessment, we separate the Wairau and Awatere flights so we are comparing like with like and so any big sweaty thiol wines don’t overshadow delicate greener elegant wines in the same flight.”

A great example of the alternative style of Sauvignon Blanc – of which there are now many – would be Dog Point’s Section 94. “It’s hand-picked and whole-bunch pressed to a maximum of about 1.1 bar,” says winemaker James Healy. “This gives a juice recovery of about 600 litres/tonne, as opposed to around 780 litres/tonne for machine-picked Sauvignon. “There’s no settling: it’s mixed and goes straight to used barrels,” says Healy. “After wild ferment it stays on lees for about 18 months, with very little stirring and no malolactic fermentation. Then it is pulled out of barrel, chilled a bit to get rid of crystals, pad filtered [non-sterile] and bottled.”

There are eight wineries in Marlborough which crush 20,000 tonnes or more in a typical vintage. In approximate size order they are Indevin, Pernod Ricard (Brancott), Constellation (Kim Crawford, Nobilo), Delegat (Oyster Bay), Villa Maria, Yealands, Giesen and Matua.

Marlborough Sauvignon is one of the rare success stories in the world of wine. It’s profitable for both growers and wineries, and it’s an example of a strong regional brand with consistently good quality. Everyone in the region is hoping that consumers worldwide never lose their seemingly insatiable thirst for this distinctive wine.