Oyster Bay Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2024

Oyster Bay's philosophy is to produce fine, distinctively regional wines that are elegant and assertive with glorious fruit flavours. It all starts in the vineyard. They treat each vineyard block and parcel of wine individually. The fruit is crushed, gently pressed and the juice is cold settled. A long, slow temperature controlled fermentation and immediate bottling after winemaking retains all the wonderful fruit flavours and aromas that are present.

Prime central Wairau, Renwick and Brancott soils. Shallow sandy loams over deep layers of free draining river gravels, providing moderate fertility and low vigour.

An emphasis on Bordeaux and UCD1 clones for pure, instantly recognisable varietal intensity and flavour. Medium-to-low vigour rootstock selection matched for suitability to clone and soil vigour.

As a founding member of Sustainable Wine growing New Zealand, we are conscious of our environment and we work hard to identify sensitive areas such as wetlands, streams and native vegetation to ensure that our vineyard practices do not affect the plants and animals that inhabit these areas. We minimise our water usage through our state- of-the-art soil moisture probe technology. We look after our soils by having inter-row ground cover plantings, and by spreading our mulch underneath our vines, to provide a botanically diverse ground which encourages beneficial insects into our vineyards.

From the outset of the growing season, Marlborough experienced warm and dry conditions, benefiting ripening and flavour development in the fruit. Marlborough’s hallmark cool nights supported slow and progressive balanced acidity in the fruit. This was supported with a cooler March, assisting the retention of acid and physiological ripeness in the fruit. Settled weather conditions continued right up to harvest, enabling fruit to be picked at optimal time and in pristine condition. 2024 is noted as a remarkable season, bringing bright aromatics, wonderful flavour development and varietal character to the wines.

Throughout harvest, fruit was selected from progressively later ripening vineyard blocks, commencing with the coastal vineyards. Upon receipt to the winery, the grapes were de-stemmed and transferred to the tank presses where the free-run juice was separated and the remaining fruit lightly pressed. The juice was clarified and then inoculated with a select range of yeasts for added complexity and aromaticity during fermentation in stainless steel tanks. A slow, temperature controlled fermentation at 12–14°C (54–59°F) was undertaken. After a short period of yeast lees contact, the wine was racked for final blending and bottled young to ensure that the fresh, crisp and elegant varietal characters were retained. Winery Notes