The wild facts about Sauvignon

The diversity of this country's flagship wine is going to be a feature of the upcoming International Celebration. And one winemaker who has proved just how versatile the variety is, believes many will be in for a big surprise.

Kevin Judd from Greywacke, along with James Healy from Dog Point could well be considered the godfathers of alternative Sauvignons. Since 1992 (when both were winemakers at Cloudy Bay) the pair have been pushing the boundaries on creating wines with a difference by making wild fermented Sauvignon. Twenty-three years later they are still pushing those boundaries and producing wines that defy all pre conceived ideas about the variety.

So how did the first wild fermented Sauvignons come into being?

At a recent tasting of five years of Greywacke's Wild Sauvignon, Judd explained the background to this alternative style.

"In 1991 James Healy suggested we ferment some (Cloudy Bay) Chardonnay with wild yeast. Now I had trained at Roseworthy College and I knew that was an absolutely stupid idea and I told him, in the modern world we don't do that sort of thing. But he kept on and on at me, so I eventually agreed. We fermented eight barrels of Chardonnay that vintage, without yeast. We just put the juice in the barrel and waited for nature to take its course.

"A couple of weeks later the whole winery just stunk of H2S, it was absolutely rank. My first instinct was that this stuff would be going down the drain. But of course I was completely wrong and some months later these amazing, rich, savoury and textural wines emerged. I was curious, we all were. So the next thing we thought, if wild ferment is capable of adding this sort of dimension to Chardonnay, why not try some Sauvignon Blanc?

"The next year I volunteered some fruit from our own vineyard, which was called Greywacke. We crushed a few tonnes and did the same thing as the Chardonnay. We put it in some barrels and let it take its course – and we ended up with some damn interesting wine."

Te Koko was born, although in that first year it was not known as that – instead the wine was simply called Cloudy Bay Sauvignon 1992.

"We took the Blanc off and underneath we put Greywacke Vineyard – that was the first use of the name Greywacke on a wine label."

A sceptic to begin with, Judd is now a devoted fan of the wild fermented Sauvignons and what they deliver.

"When we started Greywacke, it was natural to do something similar. I personally love that style of Sauvignon Blanc, so it was a no brainer that we would encorporate a wild fermented Sauvignon Blanc in our range."
But he says he wanted it to be a different style to Te Koko and different again to Healy's Dog Point Section 94. While all are wild fermented, the style each is made in, is very different.

There are numerous differences between making conventional Sauvignon and wild fermented Judd explains.

"When the fruit comes in, we extract the juice and settle it. Rather than put it into another tank and inoculate it, keep it cool to retain all that purity, which is what we do when making the other style, we put the juice into a barrel and go off and do something else. The barrels are stacked in the cellar and we leave the wine to do its own thing. So it is 100 percent wild yeast, uncontrolled fermentation. No refrigeration, we just let it ferment at its own rate.

"It takes a couple of weeks for the yeast to build up and the ferment to start. Which is quite a long time. During this period if you look through a microscope, it's like a zoo. There are all sorts of creatures in there, because there is no alcohol. As the fermentation starts and the alcohol increases, you get a selection process going on. So when you look through a microscope halfway through ferment, it looks like a normal inoculated ferment.

"Once it starts fermenting, it goes pretty quickly. Then once the fermentation gets most of the way through and the alcohol increases, the yeast begins to slow down. These yeast have not been bred to tolerate alcohol. And then by the time the fermentation begins to slow down, winter is starting to come in, the cellars are cooler and everything slows down.

"The ferments then go dormant during the winter months. By the time spring comes around and the cellar starts to warm up, the fermentations will start kicking in again. When we pull the wine out of the barrels after a year, they are pretty much finishing off. Sometimes it's touch and go and in some of the wines we have had to encourage them to finish at the end of 12 months. So it really is a very hands off process."

The end result Judd says is a wine that is riper and more at the textural end of the Sauvignon Blanc spectrum.

"I don't like aggressive Sauvignon Blanc, I am very much into the more subtle interpretations. These wines are much more a savoury alternative. There is some definite Sauvignon fruit, but there are a lot of other flavours and aromas."

Because the wines rely on wild ferments, there is also a level of variability between vintages Judd says.

"Eveline Fraser put it well a few years back. She said, when you make wine like this and release them, it's like releasing the cousins of the one you made the year before, rather than the sister. Basically when you look at these wines you see family resemblances but they are not quite so precise a lineage as they might be if they were fermented in the new world modern way."
The style also lends itself to aging, as was shown in five years of Greywacke Wild Sauvignons. The oldest, 2009, was drinking superbly and definitely quashed talk of the variety having to be drunk within 12 months of release.

Greywacke is one of the dozens of New Zealand wineries taking part in the International Sauvignon Blanc Celebration next year. The Wild Sauvignon will be among many alternative styles that are likely to dispel the talk of one variety, one style only. And the older wines will prove that Sauvignon Blanc can just get better with age.