Greywacke Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough, New Zealand 2022 (from £18.95, thewhiskyexchange.com; thewinesociety.com; slurp.co.uk) More than two decades later, I can still remember my first startling sip of Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc: a sudden, vivid snapshot of some other, better, sun-dappled green realm, where the air is alive with scents of gooseberries, wild grasses and blackcurrant leaves. That kind of astonishment is rare in wine, and the sheer profusion of wines made from the same grape variety in the same place and in the same style as Cloudy Bay since I first came across the original makes a repeat experience even more unlikely. Still, at its best there remains something irresistibly vibrant about Marlborough sauvignon blanc, something that never fails to clear the mind and put a spring in the step. As it happens, one of the people responsible for Cloudy Bay, winemaker Kevin Judd, is still among Marlborough sauvignon’s most skilled exponents, working now at the Greywacke estate he started in 2009. I came across a bottle of the current, 2022 vintage recently and it is a beauty: the passionfruit and guava in crystal clear HD.
Kalfu Sampai Sauvignon Blanc, Huasco Valley, Chile 2020 (From £17.85, fintrywines.co.uk; frontierfinewines.co.uk) New Zealand’s biggest rival when it comes to its brand of vibrant sauvignon blanc is another southern hemisphere country famed for the piercing clarity of its sunlight: Chil0e. This was once the place where you came for cut-price alternatives to the Marlborough model, and it’s true that Chile is still hard to beat for sauvignon that offers more than the shrill acidity and asparagus that too many budget bottlings present: the Co-op’s Irresistible Leyda Valley Sauvignon Blanc (£8.50) is a deliciously lime-tangy example of what’s on offer from the coastal vineyards of Leyda. Increasingly refined examples are popping up all over the country, with Kalfu Sampai, from a vineyard high up in the Atacama Desert, offering a wonderfully zippy, salty-minerally, drily refreshing style. South Africa, too, has some sites that seem perfectly suited to making expressive sauvignon, notably in cooler sites towards the Cape coast, such as Iona’s at 420m above sea level in Elgin, home to their perfectly poised, citrus, herb and elderflower-scented Iona Elgin Highlands Sauvignon Blanc 2022 (£13.25, bushvines.co.uk).
Dourthe No 1 Sauvignon Blanc 2022 (£9.25, thewinesociety.com) The true original home of sauvignon blanc is 1,000s of miles from Marlborough, Elgin and Atacama in western France, with producers in both the Loire and the Bordeaux making the case for their region as the grape variety’s birthplace. Examples from the Loire are generally easier to find in the UK, with recent favourites of mine ranging in price from £8.99 (the bustling gooseberry of Waitrose Blueprint Touraine Sauvignon Blanc 2021) to £24 (the cool-stream-over-stone rush of fresh citrus and blackcurrant fruit in Gerard et Pierre Morin Sancerre 2021 at robersonwine.com). In Bordeaux, dry white winemaking has tended to be overshadowed by the region’s great red wines, and the habit has in any case been to blend sauvignon with semillon, both in the many magnificent but undervalued oak-aged dry wines and the golden sweet dessert wines of Sauternes and Barsac. Increasingly, however, winemakers have bowed to global demand for 100% sauvignons, and Dourthe’s super-bright and tangy example is one of the most consistently refreshing sauvignons around.
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