Wine’s a Winner

Marlborough, on New Zealand’s South Island, “doesn’t offer much to the nine or ten people on the planet who still smoke, but for cognoscenti of quality sauvignon blanc, it may well outrank King Bordeaux and Queen Loire.” Over the past thirty years Marlborough has turned itself into one of the premier wine regions in the world, its charge led by Sauvignon Blancs. Sauvignon Blanc “loves sun but not much heat, and requires a long growing season with cool nights to sprout its astral un-kiwi-like wings; cool nights are key to preserving malic acid, which adds counterpoint and complexity to fruit sugars. Herbaceous notes, which may remain masked when the grape is grown in depleted vineyards, bubble to surface in young, nitrogen-rich soils.” Marlborough has all of the above, and its Sauvignon Blancs have become “nearly always identifiable in blind tastings – it’s a combination of electrifying citrus (inevitably grapefruit and often nectarine), and a subtle but unmistakable flintiness.” In Marlborough’s new life as a wine paradise, “household names, wineries like Hunters Wines, Cloudy Bay Vineyards, Saint Clair Estate Winery and Grove Mill have come of age cutting edges, not corners … taking the yawn out of sauvignon.”