Our wine.

After an era of super fruity Savvy’s, we find ourselves trying to express the more reserved side of this varietal and showcase the balance between savoury and ripe fruit. Our 2022 Sauvignon Blanc is focused on animated aromatics, racy acidity and a phenolic lift created from a skin contact portion. Taught acid gives structure to the vibrant stone and tropical fruit. On the nose the wine has a distinctive aromatic, but savoury character with soft herbs and delicate fruit. The palate is complex – driven by a nervous tension that is offset with a plentiful amount of bright crunchy fruit.

Margaret River may well be the home of SSB’s / SBS’s, however in 2022 we continued our quest in showing off a single varietal Sauvignon Blanc that expresses the environment where it comes from. This vintage, we led towards capturing savoury crunchiness and combining it with tropical aromatics and oak treatment to produce a structured style. The resultant wine is vibrant and crunchy with sophistication and elegance.

2022 was a great vintage and proved once again that even years are great vintages in the West! Things took a while to kick off with a cool, wintery spring and significant rainfall in October delayed the onset of budburst and flowering in the vineyards. Flowering and fruit sets were on the lighter side resulting in slightly lower yields dues to the spring conditions over the growing season. Summer was influenced by another La Niña season – beautifully dry, warm, sunny days right through December, January and February which lessened the disease pressure that was experienced with the wet and humid conditions of 2021. Veraison was delayed by around a month, but the consistent heat saw a rapid ripening period in the whites, and the dry weather allowed for predictable ripening patterns across most varieties which made for a very organised and well-planned vintage.

Bird pressure was also low this vintage with perfectly timed Marri blossom which provided enough of a distraction to keep the Silvereyes busy. The only significant challenge in the vineyard was the scorching heat wave over Christmas resulting in sunburn on some exposed white bunches which again lowered the crop. Yields were also lower than expected, influenced by the very dry conditions – especially for the dry-grown vineyards which took a hit with lower bunch weights and smaller berries.

The 2022 Sauvignon Blanc is from a single vineyard site in Wilyabrup and is certified organic. In 2022 the grower opened up the canopy with hand leaf plucking to allow gentle sunlight to filter through and provide light phenolics, which strays slightly from the greener aspects that can be displayed in fuller canopy covers.

On a whole, wines from the 2022 vintage will be characterised by intense aromatics, plush concentrated fruit, great structure and depth of flavour driven by good natural acidity. Even with the warmer conditions, the delicacy and elegance were not compromised. A stunningly epic vintage.

The Sauvignon Blanc fruit was harvested in the evening on February 23, 2022. 60% of the harvested fruit was chilled and pressed to a stainless steel tank where it was inoculated with a wild yeast strain and fermented. The remaining 40% was crushed to tank where it fermented on skins before being pressed off and combined with the non-skin contact portion and matured in tank on lees for 4 months prior to a light fining, stabilising, filtering and bottling in June.

In the glass this wine presents with a transparent pale straw colour. On the nose the wine has subtle stone fruit aromatics with a light, but distinctive savoury character. On the palate this wine has pronounced flavour and structure driven by the extracted phenolics which are balanced with a nervy, crunchy acidity.