Critics reviews
Jamie Goode -wineanorak.com
About this WINE
Dog Point
Dog Point Vineyard combines the considerable winegrowing experience of Ivan Sutherland and James Healy, the former chief viticulturalist and head winemaker at New Zealand's Cloudy Bay.
The name Dog Point dates from the earliest European settlement of Marlborough and the introduction of sheep to the district. These were days of few fences, of boundary riders and "boundary keeping dogs". Shepherds' dogs sometimes became lost or wandered off and eventually bred into a marauding pack which attacked local flocks. Their home was a tussock and scrub covered hill, overlooking the Wairau Plains, designated by the early settlers as Dog Point.
After leaving Cloudy Bay, Ivan Sutherland and James Healy began making wines from Sutherland's own vineyards, which were planted in the 70's and 80's. Additional fruit is sourced from selected vineyard plantings dating back to the late 1970's. The vineyards are partly older plantings on the clay silt of the valley floor where the Brancott valley joins the Wairau valley, and partly newer plantings on three ridges on the west side of the Brancott. The Sauvignon is mostly valley floor, Pinot and Chardonnay mostly on the ridges.
Grapes are all hand-picked, and, with the exception of the stainless steel made sauvignon, all wines are given extended barrel ageing with minimal racking and handling. It's a non-interventionist, natural, hands-off technique that characterizes all their wines.
Sauvignon Blanc
An important white grape in Bordeaux and the Loire Valley that has now found fame in New Zealand and now Chile. It thrives on the gravelly soils of Bordeaux and is blended with Sémillon to produce fresh, dry, crisp Bordeaux Blancs, as well as more prestigious Cru Classé White Graves.
It is also blended with Sémillon, though in lower proportions, to produce the great sweet wines of Sauternes. It performs well in the Loire Valley and particularly on the well-drained chalky soils found in Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé, where it produces bone dry, highly aromatic, racy wines, with grassy and sometimes smoky, gunflint-like nuances.
In New Zealand, Cloudy Bay in the 1980s began producing stunning Sauvignon Blanc wines with extraordinarily intense nettly, gooseberry, and asparagus fruit, that set Marlborough firmly on the world wine map. Today many producers are rivalling Cloudy Bay in terms of quality and Sauvignon Blanc is now New Zealand`s trademark grape.
It is now grown very successfully in Chile producing wines that are almost halfway between the Loire and New Zealand in terms of fruit character. After several false starts, many South African producers are now producing very good quality, rounded fruit-driven Sauvignon Blancs.
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Description
Since their debut 2002 vintage, ex-Cloudy Bay winemakers James Healy and Ivan Sutherland have been producing some of Marlborough’s finest Sauvignons under their label Dog Point and their 2013 is nothing less than exceptional.
The wine has become one of the striking expressions of the variety and the region owing to its trademark purity of fruit, plus a certain sense of ‘terroir’ more often evocative of Pouilly-Fume than New World Sauvignons. Unlike Cloudy Bay, all grapes are hand-picked, then whole-bunch pressed. Yields are slashed and fermentation is spontaneous, using entirely indigenous yeasts - giving it more fuller body and superb definition flavours. The resulting wine has real character, plus an admirable complexity often lacking in much of its other New World counterparts.
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James and Ivan continue to redefine Marlborough wine with this delicious Sauvignon Blanc. Full, rich and ripe with toasty, nutty aromas, it is gorgeous with goat’s cheese and grilled asparagus.
Compared to the more tutti-frutti, easy-drinking examples of their peers, James and Ivan have produced a more serious wine in a Pouilly-Fume mould that comes to life with substantial canapes or with smoked fish, rather than purely as a quaffing wine. This is probably due to the superior Bramcott Valley source of their fruit, as well as the use of approx 20% wild yeast in the ferment giving a drier more savoury character. Excellent.
Jasper Morris MW, Wine Director
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