SHEILD Sauvignon Blanc 2024

Reviews

Cameron Douglas MS: 93/100 (Excellent). Flavours of citrus and tropical fruits, grapefruit and passionfruit, green apples and papaya. The core of this wine is the juxtaposition between acidity and fruit, fine tannins and lees interactions. A quality wine with character and flavours, best drinking from 2025 through 2028+.

Tasting note

Star bright and pale lemon-green in colour with a pronounced nose of passionfruit, citrus, and pineapple. A powerful fruit driven wine displaying only light secondary aromas. Medium bodied with layers of flavour, the palate core is fruit dense with mineral nuances. Its presence builds and lingers for a long persistent finish that is dry and clean.

Aromas and flavours:

Additional information

Wine type: White wine from New Zealand

Varietal: Sauvignon Blanc

Food match: Sauvignon Blanc's 'zing' is a delightful complement to dishes with fresh herbs, green vegetables, seafood or fresh goats cheese. Enhance the effect with a citrus or garlic garnish. Or simply enjoy as a refreshing aperitif.

Vineyard: Appleby, Clover Road and Twin Rivers, Nelson, New Zealand. Flat alluvial soils, gravel with a layer of silt loam.

Vine Age: 15-21 years.

Vintage 2024: Winter 2023 in Nelson was normal. Not too cold, nor wet, with no major events and ground water at expected levels. Spring commenced under a building El Nino weather pattern meaning the summer should be warm and dry with less risk of major Northerly rain events. And that’s exactly how it turned out. The Nelson/Tasman region recorded New Zealands’ highest sunshine hours (again). Unsurprisingly as well, rainfall was below average and by mid summer water restrictions were in place. Grape development through the season was easily managed and fruit ended up ripe and clean for one of the better growing seasons Nelson has seen for some time.

Regional climate: Nelson’s sheltered topography gives protection from strong winds; combined with its proximity to the sea this gives milder temperatures than other South Island regions, mitigating frost risk. Regularly New Zealand’s sunniest region and with good diurnal variation this helps emphasise varietal character. High sunlight hours and a long growing season give wonderful fruit purity.

Winemaking: Sourced from a single vineyard off the Waimea Plains, three separate picks were machine harvested over a fortnight for this wine. Different parcels enabling Trudy Sheild to ‘play’ with three different juices and create a spectrum of flavours to work with at blending time. But back to harvest… Trudy Sheild has found machining to be the best technique for harvesting many of the aromatic white varieties and most definitely Sauvignon Blanc. Trudy and the team like to start early, preferably before dawn, removing the fruit quickly while the temperature is cool to minimise oxidation and preserve aromatics. Grape-skin contact with the juice during transportation and processing at the winery contributing to the concentration of flavour and the phenolic structure obtained in the juice. The winemaker Trudy uses a quick but gentle press cycle to de-juice the fruit. The juices are then cold settled for several days to achieve low solids prior to ferment promoting crisper and more pure varietal aromatics. Each parcel of juice may be split into more than one ferment tank and are inoculated with different Sauvignon yeast chosen for the attributes they will bring to the finished wine. The ferments are conducted slowly at cool temperatures again to preserve aromatics. When only a dash of sugar remains and the wines are deemed balanced, the ferments are arrested by chilling. A small volume of wine that is destined for the final blend undergoes stirring on lees to enhance texture and mouthfeel. This creates a powerful blending component and an important brush stoke to our wine style. In early July, this year Trudy set about grading the individual wines and trailing and trailing and trailing again, potential blends! Seeking a good nose, concentration of the mid palate, length and overall balance. Once confident that these criteria were met the wine was blended and briskly finished for bottling mid September 2023.

Alcohol: 13.5% vol

Residual sugar: 5 g/l

TA: 7.7 g/l

Bottle size: 0.75l

Notice: contains sulphites

Cellaring potential: 2027+

Closure: Screwcap

Ingredients: Grapes, stabilisers: yeast mannoproteins, preservative: sulphites.

Produced and bottled by: Drinks Cabinet Limited, Atawhai, Nelson 7010, New Zealand

Imported by: vinabonus GmbH, Simmedenweg 40, 34134 Kassel, Germany

Can't get enough of Sauvignon Blanc? Here is our Sauvignon Blanc assortment.