Four of the 95-point Top Value Wines are sauvignon blanc from Marlborough. NZ Wine
Top Value Wines Feature Week
Sauvignon blanc dominates the Top Value New Zealand Wine list for 2024. Top Value is defined as wine costing NZD $25 or less, and scoring highly.
Marlborough sauvignon blanc helped New Zealand achieve the highest average price per bottle of any country’s imports into the UK market.
A check of The Real Review’s Top Value Wines of New Zealand page, which is updated regularly, revealed that as of Monday 29th July 2024, there were five wines which earned 95 points, or a gold ribbon—a remarkable feat for a value-priced wine. Four of them are sauvignon blanc from Marlborough and one is a red blend from Hawke’s Bay—the Paritua Stone Paddock Scarlet from the excellent 2020 vintage. Bob Campbell’s tasting note for this NZD $25 wine reads:
“Intense, almost chewy red with cassis, dark berry, dark chocolate, dried herbs, cedar, vanilla and nutty oak. A blend of merlot, cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc. Good cellaring potential—it needs time to mellow,” with a drinking window until 2030.
But let’s focus on the sauvignon blanc wines which dominated the gold ribbon tier, and in fact, also gave us nine wines scoring 94 points. Despite being notably missing from the top Three Merit tier of The Real Review Wine Classification of New Zealand, sauvignon blanc shows that it can deliver excellent quality at an affordable price.
This Article was originally published on The Real Review
