Dry, flinty, lemon scented and with a savoury edge, Verdicchio is arguably Italy's greatest white grape - and definitely its best known top white wine, even if it is does not typically tend to travel far. 

San Lorenzo is an Italian wine producer in the Marché region on the east coast of central Italy, and the producer of this superb Verdicchio from the Marché region on Central Italy's Adriatic Coast.  

Succulent drink now Côtes du Rhône from the Sabon family, renowned in Chateauneuf du Pape. This wine has black and red fruits delivered in a beautifully balanced, silky, medium bodied mouthful. The blend is 50% Grenache, 20% Syrah with the rest Carignan, Mourvedre and Cinsault.

This cheeky little French rose comes from Provence, the setting for English author Peter Mayle's famous and evocatively named book, A Year in Provence. And this is the type of refreshing rose which typifies summer wines made in this region. It's a blend of four grapes, Grenache, Cinsault, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon, which adds structure and weight to the wine. It's dry and flavoursome. Drink lighty chilled.

“Coteaux du Layon vineyards are situated on hillsides rolling along the Layon, a small stream joining the Loire near Angers. The region has a special climate; mild with a long Autumn ripening season giving very ripe Chenin Blanc grapes which are often affected by botrytis. This produces sweet wines of complexity, intensity, acidity and remarkable longevity.” – Winemaker’s notes.

This sweet wine offers complex honeyed flavours and excellent minerality.

Veuve Clicquot is one of the world's biggest selling champagnes and is produced by Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey in a range of styles and packaging. 

Veuve is named after the late, great Widow Clicquot, who was left not only a widow aged 27 but also in charge of running a champagne house. Her legacy is to have left both the brand and the region in better condition than she found them, mostly famously by inventing riddling; the turning of the bottle to remove the yeast sediment into its neck, prior to disgorgement. This resulted in higher quality, cleaner, fresher bubbles in both look and taste. Her quest was quality and she is widely credited with having raised it significantly in the Champagne region and in the bottles it produces.

The yellow label non vintage (NV) blend is typically made up of 55% Pinot Noir, 30% Chardonnay and 15% Pinot Meunier.

One of the great pink champagnes, combining toasted red fruit flavours and the freshness of a great, complex wine with long lees ageing. This outstanding rose champagne that is made intentionally as a pink hued wine that gains richness and flavour from being a 100% Pinot Noir sparkling wine made from 10 different crus located mainly in the South and North areas of the Montagne de Reims, which is home mostly to Pinot grapes.

The grapes from carefully selected plots are sorted and destemmed before vatting
and maceration lasts from 48 to 72 hours depending on the harvest, helping to reveal all the richness of Pinot Noir.

The result is an elegant salmon pink in the glass offering a precise nose of extraordinary freshness and a wide range of red fruits: raspberry, redcurrant, strawberry and black cherry. The palate is supple and rounded with flavours of freshly picked red berries.

Champagne Laurent-Perrier was founded in 1812 by Andre Michel Pierlot and took the name Vve Laurent-Perrier when Mathilde Emilie Perrier, the widow of Eugène Laurent, combined the two family names after she decided to expand the business.

Eugenie Hortense Laurent, her daughter, inherited the House in 1925 and sold it to Marie-Louise Lanson de Nonancourt in 1939.

This stunning South Island Sauvignon Semillon blend is a maverick New Zealand take on the classic white Bordeaux blend, offering fresh, bright and delicious aromas of ripe apple, lime, gooseberry and passionfruit. The Sauvignon (70%) brings fruit flavours and excellent acidity while the Semillon (30%) brings fruit weight, richness and age ability, due to its pronounced acidity. 

Both varieties were aged on their natural deposits of yeast lees for approximately 10 months, prior to blending. This lees contact brings creaminess and body. Once bottled, the wine was left to age for another year before release, allowing the varietal characters to integrate further.

This wine drinks deliciously well now, preferably served in a large glass, but it has a long history of great age ability too and is a good wine for the cellar.

Te Mata Tasting Note

White diamond at its core with flickering lemon lights, Cape Crest ’24 opens with expressive grapefruit, lime blossom, and white currant, lifted by hints of guava and warm citrus brioche. Fine and long, the palate surges with layers of nectarine, lemon oil, and ripe tropical fruit threaded with notes of sea salt, flint, and subtle toasted cedar. Cape Crest ’24 is layered, seamless, and beautifully focused with striking clarity and drive, delivering signature ripeness and complexity alongside a refreshing, long and mineral-edged finish.

Sauvignon Blanc with a powerful new twist - full bodied, textural dry white blend of Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon and Sauvignon Gris (a varietal in its own right rather than a blend, despite the name). This wine is bone dry and refreshing with high but beautifully balanced acidity. Flavours of ripe gooseberry, lime and sea salt, dill, coriander, beeswax  and subtle woodsmoke notes all combine in this beautiful barrel fermented white. 

This is one of New Zealand's iconic dry, full bodied, top quality Sauvignon Blancs with its lush fruity style and bold flavours. 

Te Mata Estate is one of Hawke's Bay's oldest working wineries and was among the first to pioneer the purity of Bordeaux styled Sauvignon Blanc.

Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc is an iconic New Zealand wine with depth, complexity and a dry style.  Fermentation is carried out mostly in stainless steel tanks which delivers freshness and directly fruit flavours, which are balanced by a small portion of the wine, typically 4% of the blend, being fermented at warmer temperatures in old French oak barriques. A little goes a long way and this oak fermentation provides a smoothness, softness and flavoursome interest to this deliciously complex Sauvignon Blanc. Its flavour notes span the spectrum of appealing tropical fruit and herbs to dry spicy aromas and a lingering freshness on the long finish. 

These complex winemaking factors combine to create a wine that is a noticeable step up from many other Sauvignon Blancs on the market.

Greystone is one of North Canterbury's wine stars situated on the slopes of limestone rich hills in Omihi. All of the grapes that go into Greystone wines are 100% certified organic with BioGro NZ and all are estate grown. No additional fruit is purchased to supplement production, which is one of many incremental steps that go into Greystone's high quality wines. 

This Sauvignon Blanc was 100% barrel fermented in old oak with wild yeasts and is made from fully certified organic grapes with BioGro NZ certification. Like all Greystone wines, it is made entirely from estate grown fruit with nothing bought in to supplement production. This is one of many incremental steps at Greystone that consistently ensures high quality. Partial malolactic fermentation provides creamy flavour notes to this wine, which are kept in check with the balance of bright acidity and a light spicy taste which further adds complexity.

Certified organic with BioGro NZ.

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.

Chillable reds are a fabulous new wine trend where softer styles of red winemaking lend themselves ideally to a light chilling. This is a great example from Chaffey Bros in Australia. It is a juicy little blend of Grenache and Mourvedre, made to satisfy red and white wine drinkers alike. This is a pale red wine with bright ruby colour and flavours of bold raspberries and ripe cherries. It's made to drink lightly chilled and works a treat in the hot Australian heat, the country in which it was made. It travels well too… Buy at least a bottle to enjoy on warm days and nights.

Crater Rim Riesling is medium sweet in style but so beautifully balanced by fresh  acidity that it tastes medium dry with great concentration of tropical fruit flavours and a succulent, long finish. It's made with grapes grown on Glasnevin Gravels, one of North Canterbury's golden miles of vineyards.

Winemaker Haydon Good worked for Clemens Busch in the Mosel, from which he says one of his take home pieces of information for making Riesling was to make picking decision on acidity then balance the wine with residual sugar, depending on the season and the acidity. That philosophy comes through bright, fresh and clear in this stunningly good value Riesling. 

Classy fruit-forward Pinot grown on Upper Moutere clay. The elegant nose offers wild red fruits and brambles that lead to a seductive, feminine palate layered with fine tannins and lifting acidity. 

Sensational certified organic Marlborough Pinot Noir with dark fruit flavours, elegant structure and a spicy style. All grapes in this wine were hand picked and 20% were whole bunch fermented in large French oak with no crushing. Light extraction is the aim, says winemaker Damien Yvon, who gave the wine less than three weeks of total post ferment maceration time. The finished wine was then aged for 12 months in French oak, 20% of which was new – a relatively modest amount, which allows the fruit to be hero in this wine. It is a beautifully refined, silky and elegant Pinot Noir.

Clos Henri began 22 years ago in Marlborough when the French Bourgeois family expanded their winemaking from the heart of Sancerre in the tiny village of Chavignol to Blenheim, in 2001. Now that their vines are 22 years of age , the family feels that they are only now starting to reflect and express the taste of the land. This family retains their land and winemaking in Chavignol where they have made wine for 11 generations.