#6 - 2023 Private Bin Sauvignon Blanc, Villa Maria with David Roper

David Roper, Senior Winemaker at Villa Maria, unpacks the winemaking behind this famous New Zealand brand's flagship wine. He explains how they maintain consistency across varying vintages and Marlborough's three key sub-regions. He also discusses common cellar problems and their solutions, as well as market fluctuations and the challenges and opportunities in grape supply.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:23 Maintain Consistency in a Big Brand
• 10:15 Quality Control
• 17:41 Grape Supply in Marlborough
• 26:36 Outro

Transcript

Nelson - Hello and welcome back to wine. This is one bottle three questions with me, Nelson Pari and, Mike Best, master of wine. Today we're drinking 2020 Sauvignon Blanc Private Bin Villa Maria with a senior winemaker David Rope. Let's start right away with question number one. 

Mike - Dave, the question is very simply how to maintain consistency in a big brand. So you make a lot of bottles of wine every year and whether you buy that in a supermarket, whether you buy that in a restaurant, where you buy that around the world, we're really interested to get your thoughts on what are the sort of key perspectives, key themes, maintaining consistency in a big brand. 

Dave - Yeah, thanks, Mike. Look, that's such a great question because it's a... It's a really important part of what Private Label is. We've been around for a long time now, over 60 years, and one of the key aspects of our success, I think, has been the consistency. So sort of breaking it down, obviously you've got different vintages to consider, right? Every year's a little bit different. Some are cool, some are hot. Some are dry, some have got more rain than perhaps you'd like. So to be honest, I think a lot of it, for us, is the teamwork. We've got a really close-knit team key sort of stakeholders across all parts of the business and we all work very closely together and you know as you get a new season you need to adapt so in the vineyard for instance you have changes in leaf cover in hot versus wet years and making sure you're still able to pick at optimum ripeness levels of flavor so that we have a range of flavor profiles to then create blends from. The different sites particularly in is really important. So a big advantage that we have at Villa Maria is the size of our vineyard portfolio and that really reduces the sub-regional risk that there are always areas that outperform others and so you know we always have a wide range of flavors available due to the breadth and depth of our vineyards which really do span the full scale of Marlborough and Perhaps just to cover off a little bit about the differences, you know, in the Wairau Valley in the north, that's a very large, long glacial valley that was sort of the first part of Marlborough to be planted. And that's typically really warm and sunny, and it's got sort of deep alluvial free-draining soils. And that tends to be where you get that really punchy, ripe tropical passion fruit, guava, grapefruit sort of notes from the Sauvignon Blanc with those thiols. intensities that give it that really distinct Marlborough character and then as part of the Warau Valley you've got the southern valleys and that sort of runs just south of the Warau Valley where it's a little bit cooler. Topography is a little bit different it's got a bit more of a hillside aspect which is sort of from the foothills of the Wither Hills and again those soils are glacial influenced and there's a little bit more clay in some of those areas as well and then if you go to the south in Marlborough parallels the two other valleys it's much more rugged it's really windy very much cooler and that's a little bit to do with the proximity to the ocean that you've got on the north and the eastern side it's a bit drier you've got a combination of river terraces and flood plains and I guess the flavors that you see from that in Sauvignon Blanc tend to be that more fresh cut herb methoxypyrazine limey, snow pea, bell pepper, the wines from the Awatere have a lovely fine acidity and sometimes have this lovely chalkiness about them on the palate. So really quite diverse and I think bringing combinations of those into a blend is really important. It gives you a classical Sauvignon Blanc but interestingly enough that diversity actually gives you the chance to highlight those distinct areas and we sort of showcase a lot of those in our higher tier. particularly single vineyard sites. And that's where the wines themselves do end up having a signature. And we actually do expect sort of vintage variation in that. And there's plenty of other areas. There's clonal influences, I suppose, that we're looking for. And in Marlborough, the vast majority of all Sauvignon Blanc, in fact, is just one clone, MS. And that's. New Zealand's very strict biosecurity rules make importing clones quite difficult and quite expensive. So we've actually got a research institute in Marlborough, the Brigado Research Institute, who's actually very deep into a program of building a library of different Sauvignon Blanc plants to address a change of climate you know, there's different market opportunities where we're looking at, you know, where does Sauvignon Blanc go from here. So having a library, if you like, of vines is quite exciting. So always looking at vines that either are maintaining that iconic Marlborough style or perhaps offer a novel, something different that markets will be looking for in years to come. 

Mike - Obviously we can't cover off everything in that, but I just wanted to go back to the difference between that sort of regional differences between Wairau and Awatere and so on. How would you expect the wines to be different structurally? Because I think it makes sense in terms of the flavors, absolutely. And often that's what people focus on, but even from your kind of blending perspective, there's gonna be structural differences between those wines. And even things as simple as like differences in abv, that would be. important when you've got a target abv that you need to hit and so on. Are there differences there that you find? 

Dave - Yeah, they are. And look, Villa Maria, as we mentioned, talked about, it's got a suede of vineyards across the region. And it's important to pick when the flavors are there, where the balance is there without the tropical fruits blowing out too much and you start to lose acidity. You want that lovely balance of bright freshness that... that Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc is renowned for with that lovely acidity. So you know we're typically looking at vineyards particularly in the Wairau Valley that are ripening earlier being that warmer part of the area that's leading into harvest. Typically we know that there are going to be blocks within that part of Marlborough that are typically pretty much ready to go sort of end of the second week of March. You can almost we've done historical sort of track backs over 10 years and it's almost the first day of harvest is within maybe you know four or five days even though you've got different things. So some of those characters you've got that more sort of greener passion fruit perhaps at the early stage as you get sort of 10 days into it and you've got that riper yellow passion fruit coming through and at the same time you're almost looking at how the flavors and the Awatere are developing and all going well you can almost bring in the majority of your Wairau fruit before the Awatere is ready. In a warm season you might be seeing the flavors in the Awatere starting to almost track the same as the Wairau and then you're looking at your logistics pretty carefully seeing what harvest capacity you have. Do you pull some of your Wairau harvesting team into the Awatere to try and grab those flavors when you want them. But yeah we're lucky I guess being that cool climate that even though the Wairau Valley is warmer, the style of Sauvignon Blanc does retain that really fresh, vibrant natural acidity. And again, that's a big part of that style of Mulberry Sauvignon Blanc that New Zealand's been able to achieve for a long time and really, I guess, put us on the map globally as a fine wine producing country. And I probably didn't mention it, you know, probably almost 70% of the Marlborough sources that one valley, the Wairau Valley. Southern Valley sort of sits within the Wairau Valley and that's maybe 25% of the Marlborough region and the Awatere is around the balance, about 30% of the Marlborough. So the Wairau Valley is the big one. It's flat and it's easy to be managed, I guess, from a vineyard point of view. 

Nelson - What I'm curious about is because you have these two main areas and we're talking a lot about the two differences and how the blending comes into place. When the grapes are arriving into the winery, are these two valleys separated? Do you use different yeast or different temperature for it? How does it work when it comes about the two areas specifically? 

Dave - We're lucky we have two wineries in Marlborough located not too far away from each other, but within those two wineries we've got the ability to be receiving two or three different streams of trucks. So we've got... three or four different receivable bins. We've got a range of presses. So we're able to, once we push the button, so to speak, on harvest, there is a pressure to get fruit in exactly on time. So we definitely keep Wairau separately from Awatere and particularly if we've got, if for instance myself or one of my colleagues is. walking vines ahead of harvest and we identify something that's quite special or quite unique or perhaps one of those blocks that overperforms we're definitely going to keep that separate and that'll ferment in its own tank and then the beauty of that is that when it comes to blending you might have a hundred and fifty two hundred parcels that you're assessing the quality of and then you have a lot more blending options to create the final blend from it sort of putting the jigsaw puzzle together I suppose you've got all these components and a beautiful thing at the end but it takes a bit of work to get it there. 

Mike - I was wondering maybe you could talk us through a couple of like examples of the quality process. What can go wrong in the winery? What are the things that you kind of worry about thinking, okay, you know, obviously I'm sure things go wrong all the time. It's about how you fix them. But yeah, any thoughts on that? 

Dave - Oh, yeah, look, there's countless nights especially at Harvest where you wake up either, you know, with yelling something or something that... you're having a bit of a nightmare about. But I think an example would be say your temperature probe on your ferment, on your stainless steel tank, that could often freeze over or it faults out for some reason. So the SCADA technology that we've got, that will alert us early on if that's a problem. when we're monitoring ferments, that's usually done two or three times in a 24-hour period by our team. So anything that could go wrong, and certainly things do, I guess the key thing is to try and remedy it as soon as you can. It might be a press that breaks down. It might be an electrical circuit that's not working on one side of the winery, and so you have to run extension cables to make your pumps go. Another example perhaps is if your clarification unit isn't working, you've got a back load of juice that needs to get inoculated, so you need to find other ways of clarifying that juice. So you might need to cold settle some juice, and that adds a bit of time. It's not as swift or efficient as running juice through a flotation or a centrifuge. The good thing is you're working with a big team and if you haven't got the solution, you're always chatting to the winemaker on your shift or you've got the ability to call other people to say, what do I do? And more often than not, someone else has actually had that problem. So you kind of, they know how to fix it. And the team of engineers, for instance, are always available. And again, they're the experts. in that area. So you've got a good team and generally speaking, we're all on the same page. We know exactly what we want to achieve and they've got their targets to hit 100% of the time operating efficiently. That would be a dream if it was. It's not always 100% but if you run into an issue, it's, as I said, trying to address it and fix a problem before. I guess the thing that during wine maturation in barrel... You know, you've got all sorts of potential issues that could go wrong, either volatile acidity or brettanomyces, that sort of thing. And again, that folds into our QC processes, where our lab is regularly going around the barrel groups, sampling wines. For us, it might be once a month, it might be once every six weeks, so that's an analytical check. What is the VA? Where is it sitting at the moment? We plate our wines regularly to make sure there's no microbial challenges there. And on top of that, when those samples come through to the tasting room, the winemakers are giving those wines a sensory check as well. So there's plenty of areas where you're able to pick up if something's not quite right, and then you're able to react a lot quicker before it becomes actually a bigger problem than it actually is. 

Mike - On that topic, I was wondering about that with reduction, which obviously is much more of a Sauvignon Blanc is very prone to being reduced and reduction. But is that a big issue for you or have you basically got a handle on that? How do you find that through the winemaking process? 

Dave - Yeah, that's really interesting. When you've got the influence of say, thiols, which we do see in the Wadah Valley, and thiols are actually a sulfur compound, they're a mercaptan. So thiols and sulfury characters. In a component, I actually believe they do offer a complexing attribute. You take sulphides and mercaptans beyond the attractive aroma character and they definitely become a negative. So throughout your firm meat management, you're looking at certainly the aromatic characters that are coming through as the yeast do their thing. You want to make sure that the the ferments are healthy. So, you know, if a ferment is displaying some of those sulfide characters, you would give it some nutrient, you would, you know, make sure that the ferment graph is tracking okay, that the RS is dropping, that you're looking at temperature. You know, if I go around to... of some tanks and the sulfides are apparent. You're kind of like, oh, is it getting a bit colder? The yeast is starting to stress out. Does it need some food, if you like? So yeast nutrients and vina and ferment health is really important to achieve just that fruit purity that Sauvignon Blanc has. 

Nelson - So you finish your lab analysis and your microbiological analysis. When the paper arrives, what is usually the first thing that you look at? 

Dave - I usually have a scan through and you do get to very quickly note anything that's out of spec if you like. So that might be in our routine barrel analysis they're going to be checking sulfur levels that's important. We typically hold our barrels anywhere between 30 to 35 parts per million free sulfur. If you've got analysis coming through and your free sulfur is at 10 or 15, you know that you need to make an adjustment into that barrel so you're writing a work order for the cellar hands to make a sulfur addition. And likewise, if you return a result and the volatile acidity is higher than you'd expect. that's exactly when you go to the sample and you'd have a smell yourself because if you've got an attuned nose, you know, VA is something that's fairly straightforward to pick up. And if you're not, the other thing is if I'm not sure, or you smell and taste the sample and it actually looks fine, you'd just get the lab to recheck it as good as machines are, you know. I'd rather double check that the analysis is actually right before you react to do something else and if you do have a result that's way off naturally I'm kind of like well what does your gut feel say let's get it rechecked let's get maybe get someone else to also have a have a look at it and we'll make a decision that way. 

Mike - Marlborough is a cool maritime climate and has very distinct vintage variations. You can see that if anyone's interested in the Wine New Zealand run, very detailed reports and you can see about how many tons Marlborough brings in and it really makes, can go up and down quite a lot. Whereas other regions around the world are very consistent, there is big differences in Marlborough. So what are the challenges for you with grape supply dealing with both small harvests and big harvests and high market demand, low market demand. How do you manage that? And what are your thoughts about that as an idea? 

Dave - You've mentioned a couple of key aspects that the fact that, you know, we are a very cool climate. We're a tiny island in the Southern Pacific Ocean. So temperature flowering would certainly determine, you know, the potential size of harvest, obviously fruit sets. So manage that and it's sort of flow on to when we harvest. If you end up with a smaller crop, that'll ripen quickly. Vice versa, if you have a heavier crop, you can expect it to take a little bit longer. But the pressures on, to pick, as I said before, sort of flavors and aromas when they're ready. And so, gives you that wider spectrum of flavors. So changes, and you mentioned that changes in yield over the last few years have really been a bit of a roller coaster actually. You know 2021 and 2024 are two of the lowest yielding crops that we've had in Marlborough over the past 10 years despite growth in the vineyard area and development. And in the middle you've got 2022 and 2023 which were actually our largest vintages ever. So LTA or long-term average is something that we we look into because not only that, if you've got smaller or larger crops, but you've got tank capacity to think about as well. And if you're heading towards a larger crop, you need to think, man, have I actually got enough tanks to actually bring all the grapes, or do we have to stop and close the doors? So a lot of factors. Or do we think about, do we need to resource some additional ferment capacity? And that might be. a winery that perhaps has got the capacity to do it and that is a cost you need to think about. So there's a lot of things that we need to look at. Vintage 21 as I mentioned was small, that was well below LTA and so we actually had to allocate our supply quite carefully. Whereas Vintage 22 and 23 that sort of swung the other way well above LTA and then I guess together with the cost of grapes there's increases there, supply chain challenges around the world as we've all seen. The recovery has been a little bit slower. And I think the other factor that we certainly need to think about is the cost of living crisis, I guess, that the world is facing at the moment. It's definitely affecting purchase behavior. We're maybe in a little bit of a fortunate area that wine is still considered a small luxury. So consumers we're finding are still willing to treat themselves. enjoy a bottle of New Zealand wine so always something that we're thinking about. LTA is never going to happen perfectly every year and I suppose it's sort of now we're thinking about you know what have we what have we got in tank. We're still a few months off knowing what vintage 25 will bring us but and we're not really expecting it will be. the same as what it was last year or the year before that, you never really know. Marlborough does have a unique ability to swing up and down, as you mentioned. So all we can really do is look back at the past 10, 15, 20 years that we've been operating and there are trends that tend to happen and we're lucky that generally the summer and the winter are fairly consistent. So... more often than not, it's sunny when it should be and it's rainy when it needs to be. 

Nelson - Let's say I'm a new grower, right? But I'm slightly a bit of a mess. Okay, I'm just starting and I want to work with you guys and supply the grapes. What is the first thing that you check in my vineyard? So is there like a quality protocol? And if we come and start working together, how would you help me? in getting better in being a grower. 

Dave - The first thing if you're looking at a site is vineyard health. How has it been managed previously? Are there issues? Are there problems? Do you have virus? Virus is a very real challenge that some blocks have. What's the soil health like? Is it vibrant? Is it alive? Is it what? what sort of temperatures are you recording. And if you're a grower that perhaps has been growing for a while, naturally we'd want to be tasting what wines came from that block in the past if we have access to that. So the good thing is, as I said, with our grower liaison team, we've got the ability to provide really good advice and we might suggest perhaps a different spray program or. or maybe a nutrient program that needs to be happening, is there any deficiencies in the block that perhaps need to be addressing. One of the other great things is our vine supply from nurseries is an important part of what we have. So if there's a new grower who perhaps has 20 hectares of land, maybe they've established 10, they're looking to partner with us to... obviously will take their fruit but they'd love to expand the rest of their block. Well we have the ability to help provide the cuttings, the new rootstocks to go in. So that's sort of I guess where you start working together. We're going to sign a contract to say yes we'll take your fruit for x amount of years for this amount per tonne. Here are the targets that we're looking to hit. Here's the bricks levels that we want to see. Here's the acidity. Here's the the vineyard house has all of those things. And also we can help you perhaps plant this block in Sauvignon Blanc or if you wanted to plant, another variety we'd look at that as well. So it's definitely a collaboration and that ability of knowledge that we have, we wanna pass on and share that with people who are keen to partner with us. 

Nelson - Do you have specific certifications? that they need to apply to all the vineyards from the people that supply you grapes. For example, let's say I'm again that grower and my vineyard is not in regulation with your current program. Is there anything that I need to do to balance with the rest of the other suppliers? 

Dave - Yeah. So probably the key one that we really do value is a... I guess a business or a governing authority in New Zealand, and it's simply called Sustainable Wine Growing New Zealand, or SWINZ as we call it. And that's actually a body that the vast majority of New Zealand producers and growers has come to adapt. And we were lucky that probably well over 25 years ago now, New Zealand wine industry was one of the first to actually set up themselves as that Sustainable Wine Growing New Zealand. So it looks into... being accountable for what you're doing in the vineyards and in the wineries, making sure you are, I guess, not just taking and taking and taking out of the land. We want to create, I guess, an environment in vineyards where what we've got now is also there for the next generation. So you need to be careful with what you're applying, making sure you're being sensible about things. So having SWINZ certification is almost a prerequisite for a new grower. We'd expect them to have that. If they don't have it, we would help them get that certification. Because on all our wines you'll see the sustainable wine growing logo on the back of the bottle. And I guess that's a sign that the industry really cares about what we're doing. And many industries around the world have a very similar authority, if you like. So that would be the key one, I think. sustainable wine growing. 

Nelson - Thank you for listening. The three questions today were about maintaining consistency in a big brand, fundamentals of quality control, and challenges with grape supply. Dave, thank you so much for being with us. 

Dave - You're welcome, Nelson. Mike, it's a pleasure.