te Pa Reserve Seaside Sauvignon Blanc 2023

Reviews

Cameron Douglas MS: 95/100. A very enticing bouquet of fresh orchard fruits, citrus and a leesy steely mineral qualities. Apples and pink grapefruit, a tropical fruit punch flavours, fresh sage green papaya flavours underpin a crisp, dry and saline laced wine. Persistent and punchy, great mouthfeel and length, new, vibrant and ready. Best drinking from day of purchase through 2028. Excellent value wine.

Sam Kim, Wine Orbit: 95/100. 

VINOUS - Rebecca Gibb MW: 92/100. Give the 2023 Sauvignon Blanc The Reserve Collection Seaside a little air to reveal its richly fruited, succulent side. Initially a little flinty and shy with grapefruit-like citrus character, the wine opens up to show its passion fruit flavors, which come through strong on the finish. Deeply flavored and full with good concentration and substance, there’s an appetizing chew to the firm but balanced acidity on the ever-so-slightly salty finish. The Seaside is a carefully handled wine that offers purity of fruit and texture without any oak interference.

Michael Cooper (in The Listner Magazine): 5 stars & Wine of the Week. Estate-grown on the Wairau Bar, this is a classy, vibrant wine. Tank-fermented, it is freshly aromatic and full-bodied, with searching, ripely herbaceous flavours, a slightly salty streak and a dry, persistent finish. Benchmark stuff.

Tasting Note

This wine possesses ripe and generous aromatics of passionfruit, guava and lime. A floral vein of freesia and talc, with the slightest hint of mint lending elegance and restraint. The palate is dry, but full of fleshy citrus fruit, underpinned by a bright and crunchy mineral acidity. A moreish and unmistakeable impression of salinity speaks of the ocean and leaves no question as to the provenance of this wine.

Aromas and flavours:

Additional information

Type: White wine

Grape varial: 100% Sauvignon Blanc

Food match: Seafood, shellfish, salads, goat cheese

Wine region: Marlborough, New Zealand

Vineyard: Two of the historically best performing blocks in the MacDonald’s Wairau Bar Home Vineyard were selected for higher honours and additional yield and canopy management in 2022. These blocks were shoot thinned and had multiple leaf plucks. Seaside 4 (80%) runs parallel to the beach, at just 200 m from the sea. The soils are compositionally higher in sand and shingle and much lower in organic matter. These bony soils result in fruit with good acidity, citrus and floral notes, and a subtle and intriguing briny/saline character. Block 2 (20%) sits about 1200 m from the beach and 120 m from the Wairau River. It has rich alluvial soils, which support a healthy canopy and give ripe, fleshy stone fruit and exotic flavours.

Vintage summary: It was another wet start to the season thanks to the La Nina weather pattern with January and February seeing numerous rain events. The growing season was warm, although down on sunshine hours. Fortunately, the weather gods decided to favour Marlborough this year. The forecast rains in March and April never really arrived and the nights stayed cool. The grapes ripened slowly to get to target brix whilst retaining their all-important acidity. The wines are ripe, very aromatic, and beautifully balanced.

Winemaking: The fruit was handpicked and tipped directly to the press without crushing, and then pressed to stainless steel tanks for cold settling. Only the first cut of free run juice was taken for this wine. The winemaking was kept relatively straight forward, to achieve a pure expression of the vineyard. The juice was rough racked to ferment and inoculated in stainless steel tank. The ferment was left on gross lees for 10 weeks after completion to build in texture and palate weight, and left on light lees post racking for an additional 3 months.

Alcohol: 13.5% vol

Residual sugar: 2 g/l

Total acidity: 7.7 g/l

Bottle size: 0.75l

Notice: contains sulphites

Cellaring potential: 2027+

Closure: Screwcap

Produced and bottled by: te Pa Family Vineyards Ltd, 515 Wairau Bar Road, R.D.3, Blenheim Marlborough, South Island, New Zealand

Distributor: vinabonus GmbH, Simmedenweg 40, 34134 Kassel, Germany

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