Drinks of the Month

Dog Point Sauvignon Blanc 2008

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on November 10 2014 at 09:48

As I’m off to New Zealand in January I’m trying to get up to speed with what’s going on over there so I leapt at the opportunity to attend a vertical from one of Marlborough’s leading producers Dog Point.

It was particularly fascinating in the case of their Sauvignon Blanc, a wine you don’t necessarily expect to age but there wasn’t a single wine in the flight - from 2004 to 2014 which tasted tired.

The winery is run by James Healy and Ivan Sutherland who used to be the winemaker and viticulturalist respectively at Cloudy Bay. All of their fruit is estate-grown and mostly comes from from low yielding vines which date back to the 70s and 80s. The grapes are all hand harvested.

My favourite was the 2008 - a good vintage - which was full of luscious golden gooseberry fruit - so rich but still amazingly fresh.

It made me think it would be worth laying down some of the more recent releases - I particularly liked the 2013 vintage which is a bargainous £13.50 a bottle if you buy it from the Wine Society (when I last looked at Majestic it was £17 a bottle if you bought two and that was on ‘promotion&rsquo but the 2010, if you can lay your hands on any, is also fantastic.

For possible matches check out this post on food pairings with Sauvignon Blanc.

I plan to write up some more thoughts on the tasting if and when I have time (ha!). The Section 94 oak-aged sauvignons and pinots were fantastic too but there’s already a danger of this slot becoming pinot of the week ….

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