Astrolabe Taihoa Sauvignon Blanc 2016

Colour/Appearance Lemon gold Aroma/Bouquet Fresh-cut passionfruit, lime curd, currant leaf and citrus zest Palate Powerful passionfruit, guava and limoncello flavours, and a chalky, mineral texture Cellaring This wine will continue to develop rewarding flavour and bottle complexity with ageing

Sometimes when making a wine, there are elements other than pure fruit that I want to showcase, such as texture and complexity. These diverse single vineyard wines, of tiny production, are released under our Vineyards range. Paddy and Anna Trolove grew the Taihoa Sauvignon Blanc on low-cropping vines in the coastal hills of Kekerengu under the watchful eye of viticulturist Stephen Dempster. We hand-picked and whole-bunch pressed the fruit and barrel-fermented the wine using wild yeast, retained solids, and lees-stirring. The wine was then aged in French-oak barrels. This wine is an outlier both geographically and in a winemaking sense, to the typical Sauvignon Blanc wines of Marlborough. It is all about complexity, texture and age-worthiness. Simon Waghorn, Winemaker.