Marlborough Men: still trashing their biggest brand
This weekend, Dan Murphy and 1st Choice both had Stoneleigh Sauvignon Blanc on special for less than $9 a bottle. I’ve made no bones about our low opinion about these cheap Kiwis, but I kind of suggested in our Friday bargain Alert that you probably couldn’t go wrong at this price. Then I thought I’d better grab a bottle of this wine to make sure that was good advice.
Dan Murphy had none left on Saturday morning, such had been the rush on Friday when the deal was pushed out on the web. 1st Choice had a few bottles left so we grabbed one to try on Saturday night. It was rubbish, industrial concoction written all over it: fake hints of tangy gooseberry, harsh acid softened by residual sugar that reminded us of saccharin, and a finish that just went to mush.
Looking for what others said about this wine, we found our own review of the 2012 Stoneleigh, which said: ‘A standard bearer for the oceans of awful Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc being dumped on our shores. This wine gives us a brief a hint of the variety on the nose, before descending into a wishy washy mess on the palate that lacks class and structure and style. Dreadful stuff even at this price.’
Nothing to add really, except for a simple question: why do people buy this stuff?
‘Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand’s Marlborough region is now Australia’s top-selling white wine,’ Rick Feneley told us a year ago in a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald headed Savalanche.
Apparently, New Zealand sauvignon Blanc became Australia’s biggest-selling white wine in March 2009. Savvy now accounts for 40% of all white wine sold in Australia, and the vast majority comes from New Zealand: of our 20 top-selling Sauvignon Blancs, 17 are from the shaky isles. Chardonnay is a distant second at 20% of white wine sales.
The article quotes Bruce Tyrrell who has nothing good to say about Kiwi savvies, and Iain Riggs from Brokenwood who says, ‘We lost 30 per cent of our sales of Cricket Pitch white – I’d say directly to New Zealand sauvignon blanc. The more people who drank it, the more you had to stay drinking it because all your friends were drinking it.’
Not convinced, Iain. Part of the problem is the ordinary wines you and Bruce Tyrrell make at this level. The Old Winery label covers some of the few wines we’ve ever given less than 85 points to, and even the generous James Halliday hasn’t gone much higher. Your Cricket Pitch hasn’t exactly wowed us either.
Gary Walsh from the Winefront said this of the 2012: Fresh lively fruit but not overblown. Juicy mix of citrus and tropical. Slight grassiness. Well measured crowd pleasing sweetness. Clean acid cut. Bit of flint on finish. Well done. Meets market. 88 points. In other words, made to much the same crappy formula as the Kiwi savvies.
Guys, unless you put up a more convincing argument and, more to the point, better wines to compete with the Kiwi deluge of crap, you’re opening the door to more pallets of their rubbish. More on that rubbish here: Marlborough Men and the death of Sauvignon Blanc – How greedy Kiwis trashed their best brand
Kim