Bob Campbell is one of only 264 Masters of Wine in the world. An international wine judge, Bob judges wine professionally in ten countries and contributes regularly to publications around the world. His specialty is New Zealand wine which he reviews from an international perspective.
2009 Sauvignon Blanc – how good are they?
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A few minutes ago I finished tasting 41 examples of Sauvignon Blanc from the 2009 vintage – an estimated 15% of all wines produced. 26 were tank samples. A few of those were cloudy although most had been blended and fined ready for bottling. 31 samples were from Marlborough with the rest from Nelson (4), Hawke’s Bay (2), Gisborne (1), Wairarapa (1), Martinborough (1) and Waipara (1).
I’m reluctant to post tasting notes of individual wines because they are work-in-progress. Most of the bottled samples are not ready for review with release dates months away in some cases.
However the tasting gives me a chance to assess the vintage, although that assessment may change once I’ve reviewed a wider range of more mature wines.
After an emarassingly large and extremely variable 2008 Marlborough vintage most growers and winemakers dropped crop in pursuit of quality rather than quantity. That was good news for the 2009 vintage and spelled a change in attitude which promises to boost the quality of future Marlborough vintages.
February was very wet but March had half the average rainfall and April was fairly dry. That’s good news for Marlborough Sauvignon which mostly gets picked in the first half of April although one viticulturist told me, “God smiled on the greedy this year. We did a severe shoot and bunch thinning to massively reduce crop and our grapes were at their most succeptible (for botrytis and other rots) when the March rain hit. We had an outbreak of bot. while other greedier growers emerged unscathed”.
There has been a fair amount of over-the-top praise for the vintage by winemakers who, it’s fair to say, have a lot at stake if the vintage is indifferent or bad.
I don’t believe that 2009 was a great Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc vintage. It does seem to be at least a good vintage and significantly better than the previous year but perhaps not as good as 2007. As I said before, that view might change in time.
Flavours are ripe without showing a lot of very ripe tropical fruit and passion fruit characters. Acidities are high but the wines show good purity and energy. Variation in quality was less than I expected although the handful of truly excellent wines in the tasting did stand out from the field. Their was a thankful absence of bad wines.
Two wine producers are worth a mention. Saint Clair seem to have achieved its usual high standard with its flagship wines while Pernod Ricard also deserves praise for lifting the quality level in its whole range, at least all of the wines featured in the tasting.
July 25th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Yes Bob, the majority of Marlborough producers were happy ‘to get out of jail’, especially when comparing to what happened the year before!
July 25th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
I often think that many winemakers post-vintage enthusiasm (for any vintage) is heightened by feelings of relief that it’s over and the wine’s better than they’d hoped during their darkest moments.
August 13th, 2009 at 3:27 am
I sell wine here in Oregon. My Villa Maria Private Bin just changed to 2009 last week. I bought a bottle because I did not want to wait for my rep to bring it by. It was very good and fresh but not much different than the 2008. Two weeks ago I got to try a tank sample of 2009 Mud House that I thought was spectacular. It is supposed to hit our market in October. They have a new importer so I will be able to get it. I also think that it is pretty funny that 2 Oregon wineries have made Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.
September 5th, 2009 at 9:20 am
2009 was my last vintage in NZ – and yes the feelings were more of relief than extacy. Just before I left the winery the wine was looking ok, crisp, fresh and so called typical Marblorough Sauvignon Blanc-ish, but also pretty one dimensional… A little bottle age will probably fleshen out the wines a bit but I can’t see too many things push up the price tag. For my former employer and other friends in the wine industry in Marlborough I do hope I am wrong…
October 17th, 2010 at 10:47 am
I recently tried a bottle of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2009 (under the label Crux, bottled in Bristol, it appears) and it was the nicest wine i have tasted in ages, with beautiful tropical fruit and citrus flavours clearly coming through. I wonder where I can get hold of more of this wine, it was truly superb.