Stunning wine !

Pale and youthful looking but the 5% oak and 3 months lees ageing has stopped enriching the body and is now enhancing the flavour. Strong nose of elder with a palate of blackcurrant and elder with a hint of boxwood.

Worthy of a but will get better yet.

Mr G,

It is that, a superb vintage for this particular wine. I have 4 in my wine cooler set at 9C, and one buried in a wooden box somewhere in my cellar - I must find it.

I'm not aware of the oak in this, but fully approve of the standing on the lees for extra time after fermentation.

Villa Maria are making excellent wines at the reserve level, good QPR as well. I must pick a beauty from stock fairly soon. From Marlborough, and for me, I have not been bothering with anything less than VM cellar selection quality across the board of producers. So I drink less perhaps, and enjoy a whole lot more.

Auntsfield was drinking lovely as well, 5% new oak.

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Duncan

Michael Cooper (2012)5 stars
The 2012 vintage (5*) was grown in the Southern Valleys and 5 per cent barrel-fermented. It's a slightly 'sweaty' wine, weighty and sweet-fruited, with rich tropical-fruit flavours and a dry (2.9 grams/litre of residual sugar), rounded finish.

http://www.winedirect.co.uk/villa-maria-reserve-wairau-valley-sauvignon-blanc-2012

MrD, I reckon this won't peak until about 2016.

Hi G,

Thanks for that link, Mr Cooper is actually tasting that vintage, and his comments fit with Bob C. & Nick Scott, other scores listed are for different years, not relevant ! I'm not sure why RP's tasting professional does not get it. I'm rather pleased that we concur with the profs for this 2012, sometimes I confuse my own palate due to expectation, price and wishful thinking and need to get back to the wine later to be sure.

Best 2016, 4 years laying down, if in the right conditions of course. How much evo occurs and at what ambient temperatures, is always a bu**er for us to work out.

Do you remember the Vavasour '09, the bottle with the gold cockerrel on the white label, that won the Decanter gold and at only £7 or so when on offer. . . . you do. I have one in the wine cooler to take this Autumn. Will report back here.

Talking about a note of cabbage "reductive" SB from that producer in Pouilly Fume'. Because the bouquet you said was Jaw Droppingly good, I would have guessed not reductive winemaking. I only guess this, because that requires inert gases to be pumped into stainless steel tanks to expel all the air in the fermentation process, so that the polymers required for fermentation are starved of oxygen and the resulting aroma can be a bit sulpured, like over boiled eggs. These smells in theory should swirl out, if the wine is good. It's a big IF though.
My little experience of the 2011 Loire harvest at cheapo level, less money than the one you posted last night, says that the grapes struggled to ripen and were sodden at important times during the run-up to Harvest. To remove all the mold from the damaged crop takes labour intensive inspection that very few producers can afford. You said the '11 Sancerres had a note and feel of a jelly (chemical setting agent) like soapiness. Reductive SB is short of texture, and therefore acidity feels higher, racking off the wine from the lees allows some oxygen to improve (in my view) the pleasure, depth and complexity on the tongue.
Having said that stuff , a tiny bit of grey mold added to a drop of sulphur / silage clamp aroma = a composting cabbage note that could have dissolved in the wine at some point in the process. With french chardonnay of which I am more familiar, it is more like freshly cut hay that has been put in a bailing machine for a few days.
It is all pretty speculative, and I certainly would not be sure, even if I were supping the wine with you. If the cabbage is not sweet and crunchy, I guess it may spoil, whilst hay if mixed with wild flowers can be very nice for a while.
Beauty is in the eye of the . . . . . . . . . .
Cheers for now

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Duncan