Greywacke Wild Sauvignon 2017
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Winemaker Notes
A sweet-scented fusion of fragrant summer fruit and pastry shop perfume, peaches and nectarines, apple custard and lime meringues – all mingled with a dill-like herbal quality and a faint hint of wood smoke. The palate is fleshy and brimming with stone fruit and citrus, finishing crisp and juicy with a long, flinty dryness. Fermented entirely with naturally occurring yeast, this is an alternative style of Sauvignon Blanc that is both intricate and textural.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A very complex and quite different style with plenty of reductive, flinty funk and toasted-lime zest, as well as clotted cream and passion fruit. The palate has a rich and fluid feel with plush, smoothly fleshy build and a sweeping, round finish. Drink now. Screw cap.
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Wine Spectator
Succulent white peach, apricot and lemon curd flavors are wonderfully lush and complex, with whiffs of beeswax, powdered ginger and lemongrass that linger on a juicy frame. Drink now.
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Wine Enthusiast
The cooler vintage can be felt on the 2017 version of former Cloudy Bay winemaker Kevin Judd’s Wild Sauvignon. It starts reductively, with wax, onion and salty notes but opens with air to something more buttery, like a Chardonnay, with citrus, stone fruit and green herbal aromas at the rear. The textural work on the palate is obvious, and while it’s still full bodied, this vintage is a more focused and refreshingly restrained expression than we’ve seen in the past.
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One of Marlborough’s pioneering winemakers, Kevin Judd’s appreciable career is intrinsically linked with the global path of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Kevin’s personal venture, Greywacke (pronounced “grey-wacky”), was unveiled in 2009, fulfilling a long-held dream for himself and wife Kimberley.
Named after New Zealand’s prolific bedrock, Greywacke was originally adopted as the name of the Judds’ first vineyard in Rapaura, whose soils had an abundance of these river stones. Now living in the Omaka Valley overlooking Marlborough’s striking patchwork of vines, Kevin sources fruit from mature vineyards in the central Wairau Plains and the Southern Valleys.
Alongside winemaking, Kevin’s talent for photography has seen his evocative images appear in countless publications worldwide, and inevitably, take pride of place on the labels of his solo winemaking venture –– the synthesis of his dual passions.
Capable of a vast array of styles, Sauvignon Blanc is a crisp, refreshing variety that equally reflects both terroir and varietal character. Though it can vary depending on where it is grown, a couple of commonalities always exist—namely, zesty acidity and intense aromatics. This variety is of French provenance. Somm Secret—Along with Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc is a proud parent of Cabernet Sauvignon. That green bell pepper aroma that all three varieties share is no coincidence—it comes from a high concentration of pyrazines (herbaceous aromatic compounds) inherent to each member of the family.
An icon and leading region of New Zealand's distinctive style of Sauvignon blanc, Marlborough has a unique terroir, making it ideal for high quality grape production (of many varieties). Despite some common generalizations, which could be fairly justified given that Marlborough is responsible for 90% of New Zealand's Sauvignon blanc production, the wines from this region are actually anything but homogenous. At the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island, the vineyards of Marlborough benefit from well-draining, stony soils, a dry, sunny climate and wide temperature fluctuations between day and night, a phenomenon that supports a perfect balance between berry ripeness and acidity.
The region’s king variety, Sauvignon blanc, is beloved for its pungent, aromatic character with notes of exotic tropical fruit, freshly cut grass and green bell pepper along with a refreshing streak of stony minerality. These wines are made in a wide range of styles, and winemakers take advantage of various clones, vineyard sites, fermentation styles, lees-stirring and aging regimens to differentiate their bottlings, one from one another.
Also produced successfully here are fruit-forward Pinot noirs (especially where soils are clay-rich), elegant Riesling, Pinot gris and Gewürztraminer.