Last weekend, there was an article in the Sunday Star Times about Jane McQuitty, (wine columnist for The Times UK), who was quoted making disparaging comments about 2008 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. She tasted a line-up of recent releases as part of judging the Decanter World Wine Awards and described most of the entries as "evil, watery, grassy wines . . . . there were none to which I personally wanted to award even a bronze medal and none that I would have paid £7 to taste again".
It is worth pointing out that not all the sauvignons produced in Marlborough in 08 would have been entered for the competition (many high reputation wineries don't enter shows) but this is the kind of publicity that Marlborough doesn't need right now. Stories abound of 08 SBs being heavily discounted in Australia - as low as AUS$7 - and judging by the amount of discounting on the NZ high street there is still a lot of unsold wine out there. And the large 2009 vintage about to come onstream can't be helping matters.
But what I found more worrying was the wines that McQuitty did actually recommend were labels I had never heard of. Marlborough Hills? Explorer's Vineyard? Tawhiri? There was one wine I had heard of, The Reach, but only because it was described as being made by Vavasour.
On this side of the Tasman we are fond of describing our wines as premium, high quality and relatively small in volume. We scoff at those over the ditch who produce vast quantities of low priced varietal wine and use cute animals such as penguins, koalas and kangaroos to promote it. But doesn't labelling Marlborough wines with abstract geographic features; bays, rivers, beaches and lakes rather than producers or wineries amount to the same thing? If UK supermarkets buy on price and seek exclusive export labels, what is to stop major players such as Tesco or Sainsbury ruthlessly axing one producer in favour of another ? If you enjoy 'Tall Trees' Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc one year, who is to say that, with some positive reviews and keen pricing, you'll be just as likely to buy a bottle of 'Small Trees' Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc the year after.
Are Marlborough producers doing themselves any favours labelling wines destined for export markets with names that have little relevance? Surely the worry is that by not linking a particular wine to a particular winery, there is no sense of place and no reputation to establish and then protect ? I note that despite work done by the region to highlight the stylistic differences between the Awatere, Wairau and Brancott, wine writers overseas tend to lump the wines under the catch-all "Marlborough Sauvignon" banner. And as the region becomes larger and larger and the wines become more variable in quality this problem can only increase.
There was outcry a few years ago when Tescos decided to launch a 3 litre bag-in-box Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. Despite being told that the box would have an rrp of GBP20 (far in excess of other boxed wines), producers said the wine would be the downfall of the region. But now, with plenty of wine to sell, these same producers are content to label Sauvignon Blanc with whatever names will help move these wines off the shelf.