Giesen The August Sauvignon Blanc 2021

With a tropical nose featuring passionfruit, guava and lime leaves, this is a multi-dimensional wine layered with toasty almonds, fresh brioche and incredible flinty notes. A carefully selected mix of seasoned German & French oak provides complexity and elegance.

Fruit was sourced from our iconic Old Dillions Point site to craft the 2021 ‘The August’. Located in the lower Wairau subregion of Marlborough bordering the Opawa stream. The vineyard is dry farmed relying on the vines well-established roots to maintain water and nutrient supply.

The 2020 winter was unusually dry, spring commenced with a number of frost events, but it will be the inclement weather during fruit set that will define the vintage. The reduced yield enabled the winemakers to pick the fruit in excellent condition with generous aromatics, concentrated flavour, texture and lovely natural acidity.

Hands-on viticultural practice is key to the quality of the fruit for this wine. The vineyard has sections of spur pruning to naturally reduce yield. The western end is VSP trained, pruned to two canes and shoots are thinned to promote even ripeness and concentrated flavours.

Giesen created this old-world Sauvignon Blanc style and have been refining it since the inaugural 2009 vintage release in 2010. The wine is crafted to show a richer expression of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and is made to showcase cellaring potential. Complexity, depth of aroma and flavour are a result of low-yielding vines, hand harvesting, barrel fermentation, and extended maturation on lees. After hand picking, the fruit was whole bunch pressed to enhance flavour and retain acidity and purity. 80% of the free run juice was put in tanks before gravity filling to neutral 1000 litre German oak Fuder barrels with the remainder going to older French oak ‘hogsheads’. The wine was lightly filtered before bottling in February 2023. It will continue to reward cellaring for 10 years.