A cheeky 'n cheerful Pinot Noir which over delivers on all counts. Nor Wester Pinot is named after the eponymous dry north west wind that blows through North Canterbury's vineyards, often decimating bunches of grapes and ensuring that those remaining can develop thicker skins than Pinot Noir usually has. This can help to define the earthy flavours and impressive structure of the wines made in this region and, even at this relatively humble price, quality remains surprisingly high. 

Nor' Wester is a blend of grapes from the region, fermented in small batches with daily hand plunging and aged in French oak for 10 months. It's a very similar style to Greystone Pinot Noir, only it's not a 100% estate grown wine.

It offers outstanding value for money with delicious drinking now and potential to hold.

About Greystone

The Greystone wine story began in 2000 when the Thomas Family bought an old sheep farm on the Omihi hills in the Waipara Valley, North Canterbury. The rolling limestone hills lured this family in and their goal was a single minded one: to make great wines from the limestone rich soils here. Fast forward 20 years and Greystone is one of the great (and, some might say, yet to be fully discovered) wineries in this outstanding wine region. Not least due to the work of winemaker Dom Maxwell and general manager Nick Gill, who began working together in 2005 and has grown along with the brand and quality. 

This is a very good value, dry, medium bodied red from the country's second biggest wine region, Hawke's Bay, where the Babich family owns significant vineyard land. It's a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon whih reflects Hawke's Bay's vineyard plantings because Merlot is the most planted variety and it adds softness and flesh to the great structure that Cabernet provides. Babich Wines is one of New Zealand's oldest wine companies and remains in the hands of the same family whose ancestor, Josip Babich, founded it. 

Cloudy Bay Wines first made its name with inimitable Sauvignon Blanc and has since forged a reputation for top quality wines made in a range of styles, of which Pelorus bubbly punches significantly above its weight. It’s made using the same winemaking methods as champagne, which provides this wine with its creamy, rich, flavoursome style, full body and dry finish. It is typically aged on lees for two years before the bubbly is disgorged, corked and labelled. It contains 8 grams of dosage per litre, which makes it taste dry with the balance of fresh acidity in the wine.

It offers stunning value at this price.  

Bodega Terras Gauda overlooks the gentle green countryside of Galicia in north west Spain where its vineyards are planted. Terras Gauda uses its own yeasts, selected from its vineyards. These yeasts are unique to the winery and have been patented. This is one of the reasons the TG wines are so consistent because they don’t need to rely on commercial yeasts.

Chill this wine to 12 degrees and break out your best seafood, recommends wine importer Sophie Cotter, who brings this wine into New Zealand. 

Albarino is on trend globally right now and originally comes from north west Spain and the north of Portugal, where makes its fresh, zesty, dry as a bone and super flavoursome taste go particularly well with seafood. This wine comes from Terras Gauda Winery on the Spanish side of the Minho River, which separates Portugal from Spain.This region and its Portuguese counterpart over the border is the original home for the Albarino grape, known in Portugal as Alvarinho.

A blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Carménère and Malbec showing classical Bordeaux aromas and flavours of red fruit, earth, spice and leather. The palate is weighty yet fresh and accessible, and shows superb complexity and structure

Saddleback Pinot Noir is named after the bold and beautiful South Island Saddleback, a native bird to New Zealand. And the wine is also a bold one, representing a fruity expression of Pinot Noir from Central Otago. It's a blend of grapes from the region, including 39% Pinot Noir from Bendigo, 50% from Pisa and 11% from the Gibbston Valley, home to the winery's cellar door. 

This soft and fresh Pinot Noir is made from 100% destemmed grapes which were aged for 10 months in French oak.

It's made to drink now and in the next two to three years. 

Fiorini Chianti is a tasty, medium bodied Italian wine with refreshing red fruit flavours, bright acidity which adds to its structure and makes it taste great with tomato based food.

It's a traditional style of Chianti made from 90% Sangiovese with the balance being the Tuscan grapes, Canaiolo and Ciliegiolo, and a touch of French Cabernet Sauvignon, which adds to the structure. All of the grapes come from the Chianti DOCG and the wine is aged in a combination of new and old barriques and large older oak.

Mo?t Imp?rial is one of the biggest volume champagnes in the world from the vast house of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Mo?t Hennessey) and is typically a blend of 30 to 40% Pinot Noir, 30 to 40% Pinot Meunier with 20 to 30% Chardonnay for balancing crispness and freshness. It's made from Mo?t & Chandon's vineyards in all of the five main grapegrowing areas in the Champagne region.

Fabulous fleshy red wine with deep colour and powerful flavours thanks to being a four way blend of grapes from Portugal, including the hero red grape of the country, Touriga Nacional. This dark skinned grape provides depth and impressive structure in this blend, which also contains the popular Syrah, Tinta Roriz (Portugal's name for Tempranillo) and a dash of 10% Alicante Bouschet, a red fleshed grape that boosts its powerful fruit aromas. 

Exceptional dry, flinty and complex Sauvignon Blanc made with grapes grown in the Awatere Valley, the cooler climate area in this terraced valley, south of Blenheim. 

This wine is made from 100% Awatere grapes, which provides it with a flinty, fresh style where blackcurrant leaf, tomato leaf and green herbal flavours are all supported by super refreshing acidity and a long finish.

This is a consistently outstanding Sauvignon Blanc, which highlights another string to Marlborough's white wine bow.

The story of Astrolabe

Diversity, history and family ownership are among the reasons to try the outstanding range of wines from Astrolabe, which was founded in 1996 in Marlborough by winemaker Simon Waghorn and his partner in life and wine, Jane. 

Simon has forged a reputation for being one of New Zealand's most respected producers of aromatic white wines after winning an almost embarrassingly long string of awards for his Sauvignon Blancs. He has also forged a name for adventurously diverse winemaking - he produces dry flinty whites from the most southern vineyard in Marlborough at Kekerengu on the coast about an hour's drive south of Blenheim. He is the only winemaker to produce wines from here. 

He is also one of the few in this country to make Albarino, Chenin Blanc and a consistently outstanding range of wines from the organically certified hillside sloping site that is the Wrekin Vineyard in Marlborough. 

The winery remains family owned and is now run by two generations, including Simon and Jane as well as their adult daughters. 

Fresh, fruit driven Sauvignon Blanc is dry with lively acidity, a light body and intense flavours including tropical passionfruit notes typical of many Marlborough Sauvignon Blancs and also incorporating herbaceous flavours. It's the winner of a huge number of awards including the following:

2020 Concours Mondial Du Sauvignon: Gold

2020 Sakura Japan Women’s Wine Awards: Double Gold

2020 Toast to The Coast: Double Gold

Michael Franz, US: 92 Points

Cameron Douglas, NZ - 90/100 Points

Joe Czerwinski for Robert Parker, US - 90/100 Points

Whitehaven Wines began life in 1994 as a romantic business for a couple of corporate escapees, Sue and Greg White, who had given up life in the rat race of Auckland for another kind of life aboard their yacht. When sailing around the country, they took shelter in the Marlborough Sounds from Pacific storms and fell in love with the region. An easy thing to do when harbouring in the spectacularly pristine waters of the Sounds. They decided to settle there on terra firma once more and try their hands at wine production, hiring a winemaker and beginning a business which has now been around for 26 years. Greg has sadly passed away now, leaving a legacy as well as his wife and daughter, Sam, to run the winery. Their winemaker is Peter Jackson.

If you're a fan of dry white wine, try this sensational Spanish white from Telmo Rodriguez, one of the country's most revered winemakers for his role in reviving indigenous grapes and giving them a new lease of life with modern winemaking methods. 

This is 80% Verdejo and 20% Viura with dry, crisp, delicious flavours of ripe lemons and oatmeal notes. It's made from organically grown bush vines from vines at 750 metres altitude in Rueda, 90 minutes' drive north west of Madrid, on the fringe of Toro DO. The climate here is continental with hot summers,  cold winters and extreme temperature fluctuations. Rueda is a white wine only appellation and all grapes in this wine were hand picked into small baskets, then cool fermented in stainless steel with no additions - it's natural, but without the marketing noise - aside from a small touch of sulphur at bottling. 

Basa is a not-so-fruity Rueda Verdejo with the Viura in the blend to add zest and length to the wine. 

A gorgeous dry white - a must try.

Winemaker Simon Waghorn brings grapes together from three sub regions of Marlborough to make this dry, full bodied style of Sauvignon Blanc. Vineyards in the Wairau Valley, Awatere Valley and Kekerengu Coast (the most southern of Marlborough's vineyards) all combine to make this succulent dry wine with its ripe flavours of tropical fruit balanced by green notes. 

All grapes are machine harvested at night or in the cool parts of the day to preserve the purity and intensity of flavours. WInemaker Simon Waghorn blends to suit what he thinks is Astrolabe’s style, which reflects what he has learnt as a winemaker and drinker over the years. This means he aims to create a Sauvignon that tastes dry, expressive and elegantly balanced with flavours of passionfruit, blackcurrant leaf and gooseberry. 

The story of Astrolabe

Diversity, history and family ownership are among the reasons to try the outstanding range of wines from Astrolabe, which was founded in 1996 in Marlborough by winemaker Simon Waghorn and his partner in life and wine, Jane. 

Simon has forged a reputation for being one of New Zealand's most respected producers of aromatic white wines after winning an almost embarrassingly long string of awards for his Sauvignon Blancs. He has also forged a name for adventurously diverse winemaking - he produces dry flinty whites from the most southern vineyard in Marlborough at Kekerengu on the coast about an hour's drive south of Blenheim. He is the only winemaker to produce wines from here. 

He is also one of the few in this country to make Albarino, Chenin Blanc and a consistently outstanding range of wines from the organically certified hillside sloping site that is the Wrekin Vineyard in Marlborough. 

The winery remains family owned and is now run by two generations, including Simon and Jane as well as their adult daughters. 

This is a dreamy, spicy and smooth Spanish Tempranillo from Bideona, a winery founded in 2018 in Rioja Alavesa. This is one of our best sellers and is made from impressively old vines, many of which were planted in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and the result of the viticulture is incredible concentration

The wine was aged in an adventurously modern combination of French and American oak barrels, all older oak, for five months. 

The name Laderas means hills and refers to the sloping vineyards from which this smooth, softly fruited, deep red wine comes. Bodega Badiola owns 300 parcels of land on the slopes of Sierra Cantabria, in the villages of Villabuena de Alava, Leza, Samaniego, Laguardia, Navaridas and Baños del Ebro. 

The average vine age of is about 50 years and the vines are trained en vaso, referring to the sturdy bush vines, grown without trellising on limestone soils. All grapes are hand picked and the wine is aged in a combination of French and American oak barrels of second and third use, for five months.