2019 Greywacke Wild Ferment Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough

This distinctive, classy wine was grown on the Southern Valleys and Central Wairau Valley and fermented and lees-aged in French oak barriques, mostly old. Bright light yellow/green. It is fragrant and weighty, with concentrated, ripe tropical fruit flavours, biscuity, savoury notes adding complexity, and finally textured finish. Drink now or cellar.

98 points Winestate Magazine Annual Edition 2022

A really impressive, complex, oak-influenced wine which opens with airtime... showing fragrant elements of white flowers, snow pea, cucumber and gooseberry with hints of wet stones and toasted sourdough/vanillaoak characters. Dry, textural, savoury, concentrated with a superb, long finish. A spell-binding wine that gets better with every swirl of the glass and showcases the ideal balance between varietal typicity and oak integration.’

97 points Bennet & Hudson winerater.co.nz

Fermented in oak using endemic yeasts. Textural and moderately concentrated wine with grapefruit, ginger, roasted nut, oyster-shell and saline flavours. A sophisticated, complex wine that has developed a cult following. 26 Jan 2022 Drink 2022–2026

A favorite sauvignon with sliced-pear, apple, smoke and flint aromas that follow through to a full body that is tight and well structured with tension and focus. Drink now. Screw cap.

94 points jamessuckling.com

Greywacke is the Marlborough label of Kevin Judd, and the fulfilment of a long held dream. The name Greywacke was adopted by Kevin and his wife Kimberley for their first Marlborough vineyard located in Rapaura, named in recognition of the high prevalence of rounded greywacke river stones found in the soils of the vineyard. Kevin registered the name back in 1993 with the vague notion that he might one day want to use it on a wine label of his own.

Kevin Judd founded Greywacke after working as chief winemaker and later general manager at Cloudy Bay for 24 years before launching his own brand. Judd is the country’s top specialist wine photographer. The genesis for Greywacke Wild Sauvignon was Cloudy Bay Te Koko; a funky, barrel-fermented sauvignon blanc that bent all the rules when it was made in 1992 and initially sold only through the cellar door.

Greywacke Wild Sauvignon is a blend from 10 different Marlborough vineyards which are machine-harvested at night. After pressing the juice is settled before being pumped into mostly old barrels and fermented using indigenous yeasts (about 15-20 different strains). The wine undergoes a partial malolactic fermentation and lees stirring (which reduces buttery characters).

A feature of Greywacke Wild Sauvignon is the distinctive mineral, struck flint, struck match characters that vary in intensity from vintage to vintage. Judd acknowledges the role of wild yeast fermentation and the use of solids in the formation of sulphides, which are controlled to some degree by controlling the level of solids in fermentation