New Zealand Whites: Never Gonna Give You Up

BY REBECCA GIBB, MW | MARCH 25, 2025

Rick Astley is forever tied to “Never Gonna Give You Up.” The 1987 breakthrough hit made him a household name. But if you’re asked to think of another Rick Astley hit, you’ll likely draw a blank. It’s the song people want at every concert. It’s the song that gets played on ‘80s radio stations day in and day out. It’s the song that pays the bills—Astley is worth an estimated $16 million—and it has kept him in the public eye for the past 40 years. He has other songs, but the world only wants “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Astley must feel like he’s stuck on repeat.  This is the same dilemma facing many New Zealand winemakers when it comes to Sauvignon Blanc. The grape has been the country’s star performer, earning global recognition and securing New Zealand’s place in the global wine market. But while it continues to pay the bills and bring in praise, there’s a growing frustration with the idea of being defined by just one variety. New Zealand’s winemakers are inextricably linked with Sauvignon Blanc, but they can’t help but wonder what it might be like to be known for something else.

Rick Astley’s voice filled our ghetto blasters in the same period as Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc burst onto the international wine charts. This white wine style was as fresh and distinctive as Astley’s baritone voice and marked the beginnings of New Zealand’s global reputation as a wine producer. Marlborough was—and remains—the engine room of the country’s Sauvignon Blanc production. Such is the variety’s success in this corner of New Zealand’s South Island that the region’s output accounts for 72% of the country’s total wine production. The country has a remarkably short history compared with other New World wine nations. In fact, 2025 marks just 50 years since the first 50 acres of Sauvignon Blanc vines were planted in Marlborough. In 1975, the grape variety first took root in the alluvial soils of the Wairau Valley alongside a fruit salad of other vines, from hybrids like Baco 22A to Vitis vinifera that are now considered laughably unsuitable for this cool region at the top of New Zealand’s South Island. Inevitably, many varieties didn’t make the grade or didn’t survive at all. Half a century later, there are vines here as far as the eye can see, from the mountains to the sea, lines of green covering the valley floor, creeping upwards and sprawling into what remaining unplanted land there is.

Marlborough’s vineyards are increasingly heading up the hillsides, away from the valley floor.

There are some who openly wonder whether New Zealand should align itself more closely with Chardonnay, which some view as a finer partner to the country’s main red variety, Pinot Noir. New Zealand has built a loyal following for its Sauvignon Blanc, providing a launch pad for wineries, retailers and buyers to further exploration of the wines from the bottom of the earth, but Sauvignon Blanc does not have the allure of Chardonnay or Riesling to fine wine lovers. I receive plenty of pitying expressions when I reveal to these oenophiles the number of Sauvignon Blancs I taste each year.  An undeniable snobbery exists towards this grape that is capable of finesse, restraint and evolution. Even its makers in the Loire don’t like to talk about Sauvignon Blanc because they claim not to like its varietal characteristics, despite spending their entire lives nurturing its vines and shaping its wines. For many, the definition of a fine wine includes ageworthiness, but does a lack thereof mean Sauvignon Blanc cannot make fine wine? Is that the view of Château Margaux toward Pavillon Blanc, or Anne Vatan to Clos la Néore? Hardly.

Inevitably, there are two very different ends of the New Zealand white wine market, as there are in most wine regions. Firstly, there are the traders, cropping vines with four canes and exhausting the soil to make light, bright, bulk Sauvignon Blanc to be piled high and sold in supermarkets. While they account for a hefty chunk of the production volume, there are plenty of smaller wineries that have the ambition to make wines not just with fruit, but also savory complexity, with the long-term goal of passing on a living, healthy ecosystem to the next generation—and the one beyond.

In the vineyards, there’s much discussion about improving soil health by moving away from traditional herbicides and fertilizers and toward under-vine weeding, cover crops and organic fertilizer. The term “regenerative agriculture” now peppers conversations with growers and producers, whereas a year ago, it was rarely mentioned. It is not just the small-scale producers making the commitment to better farming practices; Cloudy Bay is aiming for 500 hectares of its own vineyard to be herbicide-free this year and fully organic by 2030. Similarly, Craggy Range, whose plantings span 335 hectares across Martinborough and Hawke’s Bay, has also pledged to farm its entire vineyard area organically by 2030.

Craggy Range is growing its plantings on Te Muna Road in Martinborough and moving toward organic farming.

While the future health of New Zealand’s vineyards is under scrutiny, the future of its bottled wines is also a hot topic. With regard to ageworthiness, there must be some consideration of bottle closures. Screwcaps are ubiquitous in New Zealand, sealing more than 90% of the country’s wines. Fed up with an increasing amount of subpar corks ruining wines in the 1990s, the New Zealand Screwcap Wine Seal Initiative was formed in 2001 with 32 winery members. Since then, screwcaps have proliferated in the country. Is this the end of the cork story for New Zealand? Not necessarily. At the end of 2024, UK fine wine merchant Farr Vintners hosted a blind tasting of the same wines under both screwcap and cork, including two New Zealand producers—Kumeu River and Felton Road—as well as an extensive collection of wines from Burgundy’s Domaine Verget, which switched from natural cork to DIAM technical closure in 2012. While the 2002 Kumeu River wines under screwcap were certainly outliving and outshining those oxidizing under natural cork, there were no definitive conclusions to be drawn. Tasters disagreed. Results were varied.

This was certainly not a tasting that would hold up in a scientific journal. Some wines sealed under screwcaps sported more permeable liners than others, and some corks were natural while others were DIAM of varying specifications (winemakers can choose products assuring two-, three-, five-, 10- or 30-year preservation durations.)  What’s more, some screwcaps appeared to be showing similar or occasionally even more evolution than their cork-sealed counterparts, which could have been due to the use of non-impermeable liners within the screwcap. For example, Verget switched to an impermeable liner within the screwcap from 2015 onwards, and the 2015 Pouilly Fuissé La Roche was unevolved compared with its cork counterpart.

One of the takeaways from the tasting was the slow evolution of wines using the technical cork DIAM 10, which has a relatively low permeability known as oxygen transmission rate, compared with the same wine under screwcap. However, DIAM uses a glue that creates a few issues for those with a green mindset. North Canterbury’s Pyramid Valley has farmed its vineyards biodynamically and bottled its wines under screwcap since its inception. Managing Director Steve Smith, MW has now decided to make the move to DIAM with the release of a more ecologically conscious closure that uses beeswax as the binding agent for the cork pieces rather than a synthetic agent. “I’ve been unwilling to change from screwcap to DIAM until I found a cork that fit with our sustainable ethos, but from the 2023 vintage, we’re moving to DIAM 10 Origine.”

Marlborough’s Wrekin Vineyard is gaining renown for its organically grown Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc and Pinot Noir.

A Review of the 2023/2024 Vintage

Marlborough

Following two challenging vintages, the 2023/2024 season brought some relief for fatigued grape growers in New Zealand’s major wine-producing region. It had seemed a constant battle leading up to the harvest in both 2022 and 2023 with high disease pressure, particularly powdery mildew and botrytis, creating additional work for the region’s 485 growers. A dry season ahead of harvest in 2024 meant close to zero botrytis pressure. Matt Thomson, co-founder of Blank Canvas, explains, “It was some of the cleanest fruit I have seen in 64 vintages. I didn’t see a single botrytized berry.”

However, 2023/2024 was a small-yielding year for Marlborough, down 21% on the previous season.  Spring weather was cool and grey, which presented far from ideal conditions for flowering, meaning the crop volume was already limited from the first half of the growing season. A cool late summer would’ve made it difficult to ripen fruit, too, but fortunately, the vines weren’t carrying much to begin with. Stu Marfell, chief winemaker for Foley Family Wines, says, “It wasn’t one of those summers where you’re always out swimming. It was cold right through until mid-February.” Drought conditions further limited the potential crop. The country’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) reported that from October 2023 through February 2024, Blenheim (Marlborough’s main town) recorded just 88 millimeters of rain—the lowest total rainfall over that period since 1941. This resulted in small berries and loose clusters, which is great for preventing disease but not so great for filling the tanks, nor the coffers. Small berries also raise the skin-to-juice ratio, which can yield undesirable tannins in white wines. Hand-harvested wines were thus more successful in 2024. There are numerous instances where the extra skin contact caused by machine-harvesting fruit (which represents 98% of all fruit harvested here), led to wines with a hard finish, which seems to be the result of both phenolic edginess from the skins and acidity. Winemakers who perceived that hardness before bottling turned to fining as a tool to mitigate that edginess.

In the lead-up to harvest, cooler-than-average days and cold nights—including a number of frost-fighting nights in the third week of March—meant that the malic acidity in the grapes, which provides a wine with citrus- or green-apple-like acidity, was slow to fall. While producers with multiple vineyards and many hectares of land have less flexibility in picking schedules, the smaller, nimbler producers could take their time thanks to the lack of disease pressure. “You’re normally trying to pick before you lose acidity, but the nights were cool so the acid was not dropping off,” says Richelle Tyney, winemaker at Greywacke. However, Blenheim experienced an extremely sunny summer, and Brix levels continued to rise. As a result, some of Marlborough’s top wines show riper characteristics and more mid-palate richness, with alcohol levels topping 13.5%. The fruit spectrum can be a little more opulent than usual, verging into white stone fruit and ripe tropical notes of mango and passion fruit.

It's good to see fewer wines with sweaty aromas, caused by sulfur-containing compounds called thiols, than in past years. While thiols are essential to Sauvignon Blanc’s signature scents, certain compounds can create unpleasant aromas at high concentrations. Thankfully, such styles are becoming rarer with each passing vintage. Reduction is also less and less common, which can only be a good thing, showing that winemakers are now attuned to the contents of the bottle and how they will react when sealed under a screwcap. What’s more, in 2024, the lower-than-usual yields ensured that Sauvignon Blanc’s green characteristics were less overt, providing intrigue rather than distraction in the wines.

Rugged peaks and piercing blue skies frame Marlborough’s Wairau Valley.

Nelson

While the North Island was hogging the headlines for the wrong reasons in the middle of  summer 2023, Nelson stayed remarkably dry.  In the northwest of the South Island, this small wine region’s most famed fine wine producer is Neudorf, specializing in Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Rosie Finn, daughter of Neudorf’s founders and whose job title is Global Neudorf Cheerleader, says, “When we get tropical cyclones, they swing down, and Nelson does often cop it. But this time, the cyclone clipped Auckland and affected the North Island, so we felt very blessed for once. Over harvest, we had clear days and blue skies, and clean fruit.”

Martinborough

With fewer whites released early, notably Sauvignon, and a greater focus on barrel-aged Chardonnay, meaning many wines are as yet unbottled, it’s still too early to make a statement on 2024 in Martinborough. Like Marlborough, the season started off a little wet, but the weather cleared up after Christmas, yielding clean, ripe fruit with good acid retention. Only a few producers have released 2024s, while others have a small amount of 2023 Chardonnays and Rieslings that were salvaged after the soggy, cyclone-affected vintage.

Hawke’s Bay

This is not Sauvignon Blanc country. Hawke’s Bay, on the North Island, has a temperate maritime climate that lends itself to growing Chardonnay. The 2023s will be the latest release. There are a few noteworthy examples, but it’s a miracle there were any produced. On February 12, 2023, Cyclone Gabrielle made landfall on New Zealand’s shores. Heavy rainfall flooded Hawke’s Bay’s plains, leaving them covered in silt that cost $228 million NZD ($132 million USD) to clear. Numerous vineyards were swept away, flooded or covered in silt. Some producers were unable to reach their vineyards due to landslides that closed roads. And yet, there are still some 2023 Chardonnays flowing onto the market. Those who could salvage the fruit picked selectively and quickly with lower ripeness levels, akin to Chardonnay for sparkling wine. Unsurprisingly, the range of wines is far smaller, with single vineyard fruit generally being declassified. Chardonnay specialist Tony Bish sought out fruit from friends in Marlborough to bolster his normally 100% Hawke’s Bay Chardonnay Fat & Sassy, with some growers even donating the fruit at no cost. In terms of fine wine, 2023 is probably a vintage to miss.

Lush vineyards contrast the brown hills of Marlborough’s Southern Valleys.

Central Otago

Pinot Noir dominates the landscape in Central Otago, but the four most planted whites in the world’s most southerly wine region are Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc. A small selection of 2023s and 2024s show clarity, precision and concentration. The 2023 season benefited from warm and dry conditions with some much-needed rain at the end of February, leading to higher yields, early harvests and some frost-fighting right at the finish. There were more challenging events ahead of the 2024 vintage, including a late frost in October 2023, a hailstorm in early February 2024, and more frosts in March 2024. Inevitably, these events affected yields. Grasshopper Rock reports a cool and dry, albeit sunny, run-in to harvest: “March was surprisingly cold. Growing degree days were 29% below average, which set the season up for a cool finish. Frost alarms went off on six days when temperatures dropped below 0°C [32°F] in the vines. However, a period of clear days with no rain progressed ripening faster than expected.”

A Final Word

While New Zealand, like the Sancerrois, should never give up on Sauvignon, the country does not need to focus on Sauvignon Blanc alone. There are plenty of other varieties that can and should enjoy an affinity with New Zealand’s dirt while remembering to thank the land, sky and water for what it has given them: fruit purity, luminosity and brightness. Future thinking is already here as producers and winegrowers wonder “How can we pass the land to the next generation in good condition while managing the increasingly unpredictable climate?” But that’s only a section of the wine community; there are others with their eyes solely on profit who are leaching their land of life to make low-value wine. Ultimately, wine is all about the people: the people who make it, the people who sell it and the people who drink it. It’s up to the individual to decide what sort of winemaker, wine retailer and wine drinker they want to be, but we all have a responsibility to make better choices.

I tasted the wines for this report at a number of events in the UK, on a two-week trip to New Zealand and at home in England.

© 2025, Vinous. No portion of this article may be copied, shared or re-distributed without prior consent from Vinous. Doing so is not only a violation of our copyright, but also threatens the survival of independent wine criticism.

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