Huia Sauvignon Blanc 2021

Sauvignon Blanc is one of Huia’s speciality wines. The wine has great texture and the ability to develop with age. A portion of the wine is aged in large oak vats on the lees, giving the wine extra structure and its subtle power. A wine of true class with great typicity.

"Moderately punchy sauvignon blanc with gooseberry, lime, passionfruit and green capsicum flavours supported by tangy acidity. An organic wine made with minimal intervention."  Bob Campbell MW

"Golden green. On the nose, tropical fruits, lemon blossom and elderflower. The palate has mineral, lime zest, and melon with excellent length. 100% organic Sauvignon Blanc grapes. The vineyard is well draining alluvial river-run soils. The majority of grapes were harvested in the cold early hours of the morning to retain fruit intensity. The grapes were gently pressed and the juice settled. Approximately sixty-five percent portion of juice was fermented and matured in neutral French oak. Wild yeast endemic to the Huia winery were  used with non-GMO organic yeast used where inoculation required."  Huia

Expert reviews

"Moderately punchy sauvignon blanc with gooseberry, lime, passionfruit and green capsicum flavours supported by tangy acidity. An organic wine made with minimal intervention."  Bob Campbell MW, The Real Review - 92 points

About the winery

Huia Vineyards is a family-owned winery based in the Wairau Valley of Marlborough (refer to the map below). Mike and Claire Allan purchased the vineyard land along the banks of the Wairau River beneath the dramatic slopes of the Richmond Ranges in 1990 and launched the Huia wine company in 1996.

Huia is named after the Huia, a native New Zealand bird with beautiful plumage. Its distinctive tail feathers were highly prized, both by the Maori and by milliners. Sadly, this species hasn’t been seen since 1907 and is now almost certainly extinct.

Claire and Mike returned to Marlborough from making wine in South Australia, at the end of 1989, intrigued by some of the wines coming out of the region. Back then, the Marlborough was a fairly unknown entity on the world wine stage. "We were brought back to Marlborough by the flavours in the wines from the likes of Stoneleigh and Cloudy Bay," explains Claire, "It was pretty interesting stuff." They spent their early years gaining valuable experience, working at Cloudy Bay, Vavasour, Corbans, and Lawson’s Dry Hills in Marlborough, and Taittinger and Veuve Clicquot in Champagne. 

It’s the soils around Marlborough that give the wines their unique quality and flavour and their sense of place. Huia owns and manages two separate vineyard sites. One is on the property they live on, in the Raparua region of the Wairau Valley, and the other is located across town, in the Lower Dashwood region of the Awatere Valley. They also buy some pinot noir from certified organic growers near the Southern Valley region of Marlborough. 

"The flavours from the different areas are quite extreme," explains Claire. "The Wairau side of the valley is all river terrace with multiple varieties of soils, mainly rocks, with very little earth, through to silt, sand and clay. This is where much of the tropical fruit characteristics from the Marlborough come from. Further, towards the sea, where our Dashwood vineyard is, there’s more of an elderflower character that comes through."

Huia is one of Marlborough’s only producers dedicated to the production of minimal intervention, organically farmed wines, as they are acutely aware of the need for long-term sustainability to preserve the environment. Their vineyards are certified organic by BioGro, New Zealand’s leading organic certification body.

"I don’t know why everyone isn’t organic. I think it’s really simple," says Claire. "It's just a simple set of rules that you adhere to." In simple terms, organic farming is more about what not to do (spray with synthetic agrochemicals), whereas biodynamics actively encourages inputs onto your farm or vineyard which have been prepared from organic raw materials. Huia is certified organic, but they do practice biodynamics as well. "For me organics is one thing," says Claire, "but it’s not enough, so we do a whole lot of BD anyway… I just regard it as all being organic… Our vineyards are just lovely."

Sections of the above text were taken from an article that appeared in The Wine Idealist 

Huia Vineyard and Marlborough sub-regions