Viticulture

Situate in Marlborough’s renowned Rapaura Area the Staete Landt vineyard experienced good rainfall during the 2007 winter followed by sunny warm days in spring.
This resulted in punctual bud burst for the sauvignon blanc vines, also the hot dry weather through flowering in September provided beautifully full, well set bunches.
Long hot summer days continued with hotter than average temperatures and higher than average sunshine hours. Due to this great weather a clean well balanced crop of sauvignon blanc ripened a little earlier than average. The first sauvignon blanc was harvested on the 24th March. Subsequent parcels were then harvested at optimal ripeness with the last block being picked on the 2nd of April.
The warm beautiful 2008 vintage gave us beautiful clean fruit with optimum physiological ripeness and great intensity of flavours.

The sauvignon blanc in the Staete Landt vineyard is planted in six separate parcels each providing its own unique expression. These parcels are always picked separately giving an array of different flavours and structure resulting in a wine with great complexity and finesse. The first picks with their hallmark Marlborough herbaciousness and crisp acidity combine elegantly with the concentrated rich tropical fruit of the later picks.

Harvest Dates: 24th March – 2nd April
Brix: 23 – 23.8 Brix

Winemaking

Each parcel was managed slightly differently in the winery. The machine harvested parcels were fermented using various neutral yeast strains in order to emphasize the fruit flavours and aromas. Two large other portions were hand picked and whole bunch pressed to retain delicacy and elegance. One of these hand picked portions along with half of the machine picked portions were aged on the lees for 2 to 5 months. During this time we allowed these components to develop a subtle but complex creaminess. The second hand picked portion (about 20% of the wine) was fermented in 6 to 10 year old barriques with a mixture of cultured and indigenous yeast strains. This resulted in more complexity to the wine and minimal oak flavour due to the age of the barrels.

Wine Analysis

Alcohol: 14%; Acidity: 6.0 g/l; pH: 3.14; Sugar: < 2 g/l

Tasting Note

This 2008 Staete Landt sauvignon blanc is an aromatically intense wine, perfumed with exotic fruit such as pawpaw, passionfruit and nectarines. On the palate the wine is full bodied, well balanced with great complexity and silken texture. This rich and voluptuous wine has attractive mineral characters and European style elegance.