Looking for quality wines that offer unbeatable value? Read on.
Sam Smail, senior winemaker at Whitehaven.
It’s a job few would envy, I know. This year I tasted over 3000 New Zealand wines, then compiled the reviews, with ratings for quality and value, in my Buyer’s Guide to New Zealand Wines 2012. The final task each October is to select the winners of the Best Buys of the Year awards. The spotlight goes on two wines – one white, one red – that offer unbeatable value.
Last year, the winners were Villa Maria Private Bin Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2010 and Church Road Hawke’s Bay Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon 2008, both classy wines that were typically sold on “promotion” at under $15. The 2011 Villa Maria savvy and 2009 Church Road red, now on sale, are again great buys.
The new Best White Wine Buy of the Year is Whitehaven Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2011 ($17.99-$19.99). Whitehaven is arguably better known in the US – where it is distributed by one of its shareholders, global winegiant E & J Gallo – than in New Zealand, but from one vintage to the next, its sauvignon blanc is top-flight and bargain-priced.
Whitehaven Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2011 is a classic regional style – mouthfilling, punchy and dry, with crisp, ripe tropical-fruit flavours to the fore, a herbal undercurrent and lovely poise, delicacy and length. Already delicious, it is the sort of sauvignon blanc that draws you back for a second glass … and a third.
Over the years, the wine has won many top accolades. The 2010 vintage scooped a gold medal and the trophy for champion sauvignon blanc at this year’s Royal Easter Show Wine Awards 2011. Already, the 2011 has collected a gold medal at this year’s International Aromatic Wine Competition.
Sue White, the company’s co-founder, says the key to the wine’s quality is Whitehaven’s access to grapes from throughout the region. “We can select for fruit weight and flavour intensity from individual [batches of wine] produced from the grapes of 31 vineyards throughout the Wairau and Awatere valleys, and as far south as the Ure Valley and Kekerengu [halfway between Blenheim and Kaikoura].”
Senior winemaker Sam Smail arrived at Whitehaven in 1999. His description of the 2011 sauvignon blanc is spot on: “The palate is full and vibrant. Fresh nettle, gooseberry and tropical-fruit flavours abound and linger on the long,clean acid finish.” If you are looking for a five-star sauvignon blanc at a three-star price, grab it.
Wild South Marlborough Pinot Noir 2010 ($17.99) wins the Best Red Wine Buy of the Year award. A delicious drink-young style, it is a generous, sweet-fruited red, ruby-hued, with good depth of cherryish, plummy flavour, ripe and smooth.
At $18 or less, it offers unbeatable value for a pinot noir. The judges at the International Wine & Spirit Competition, in the UK, presumably agreed last month, awarding it a silver medal.
“We’ve never had money for marketing,” says David Mason, who controls Sacred Hill, owner of the Wild South brand. “The money goes into the wine itself.” The key point is that Wild South Marlborough Pinot Noir 2010 is just as impressive, in quality terms, as most pinot noirs in the $25-$30 price bracket.
And it’s consistently a great buy. The 2009 vintage collected a silver medal at the 2010 DecanterWorld Wine Awards in London, where the judges praised it as “wild strawberry, beautifully silky and ripe on the palate, with a juicy and elegant length”.
Glengarry Wines promotes Wild South Marlborough Pinot Noir 2010 as delivering “all that’s good about pinot noir – complexity, intrigue, glamour – without the associated price tag”. Fair enough.
Compared with most pinot noirs in the sub-$20 price category, the Wild South is unusually savoury and complex. Winemaker Christie Brown describes it as having “velvet tannins, which give a seamless flow through the palate, carrying with them warm, earthy notes, which add depth and softness to the wine”.
Wild South suggest this bargain-priced red will cellar well for up to five years, but it’s already hard to resist.