WARD FARM SAUVIGNON BLANC 2006

This wine from Mahi is a single-estate wine that expresses the particular vineyard from which it comes. The grapes are picked early in the cool mornings and the wines made in as natural a method possible, with the focus being on gentle handling and indigenous yeast ferments.

The 2006 vintage was a particularly interesting one in that we started picking the fruit very early, some even earlier than the warm vintage of 1998. The key difference though with this vintage was that it wasn’t very hot, it was just that the whole season got off to an early start with a precocious budbreak. The weather in August and September 2005 was very warm and the vines thought that it was spring so started to break bud. This can often be a real problem if the spring frosts are heavy as they can burn off the young buds but we were very lucky and got through without any damage or loss of fruit.

The rest of the growing season was slightly warmer than normal until mid-January when it started to cool down but the vines were programmed by then and we knew it would be an early harvest.  The cooling at this stage had the effect of retaining the fruit characters and acidity rather than them being burnt off and when the key month of March stayed quite cool it meant that the fruit picked had great fruit intensity and an array of aromas.

This wine comes from a particular parcel in the Ward region which is located south of the Awatere Valley and quite close to the sea. It is a relatively new area for grapes but from what we have seen over the last couple of years with some Pinot planted here we have been very impressed. If you take the coast road south from Blenheim you pass through the village of Ward just before you get to the sea, so there is some cooling influence from the water. The vineyard is planted on a slope which helps with drainage and allows the grapes to see the sun later in the day, helping to attain ripeness in this slightly cooler area.

In the winery the grapes were pressed very cool then taken and taken to both French barrique and tank for fermentation. The barrel portion went through ferment with indigenous yeast, and it was all kept on lees for 5 months before racking and bottling.

The wines of Mahi are not rushed to bottle and we believe that with correct storage this wine will continue to develop in interest and complexity.

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