Loveblock, Tee Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough

Did you know that dandelions represent the heavenly bodies?

The yellow flower is the sun, the white puffball is the moon and the individual seeds are the stars. If you can live for nearly 50 years before learning that, then you can live for nearly 50 years before learning the full potential of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.

Loveblock Tee is the wine that taught me both.

The potential in this particular Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc isn't just about flavour, although that's a central part of the story; it's also about sustainability and SO₂.

I first heard about the wine in 2021, when its tenacious Singaporean importer sold it to me as the first-ever wine to use green tea as a preservative instead of sulphur dioxide. Curiosity piqued, I tasted the 2019 vintage and enjoyed how different it was to the standard Marlborough style, which has become so overfamiliar and exaggerated; instead of sweet-sour gooseberries and pungent herbs, here was orange peel, honey and orchard fruit.

These flavours seemed at least in part due an oxidative development than you don't get in standard Marlborough Sauvignon, which is usually made in a hermetically sealed way to preserve its distinctive thiol and pyrazine compounds. A friend of mine compared Loveblock Tee style to Savennières, the famously funky Loire Valley Chenin Blanc, and he's not wrong. How much was the use of green tea responsible for that style?

I found out on an hour-long webinar with Erica Crawford, pictured above and described as 'wife, mother, founder, viticulturist' on their website. Along with her husband Kim, she started making conventional Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc in 1996, when that style was in the ascendancy. They purchased grapes, made wine under contract and sold it under the Kim Crawford brand, which was subsequently sold to Constellation in 2006. At one point, it was apparently the biggest imported white wine in the US.

Loveblock is what they did next, and is the opposite model: 100% estate-grown fruit that they make into wine themselves. This gives them full control, allowing them to practise sustainable winegrowing, which they describe as 'a combination of environmentally sound, socially equitable, and economically viable processes […] to grow grapes without harming the environment or the health of our staff, families or communities.'

The first vintage of Tee came in 2018, following experiments using various powdered teas in lieu of sulphur dioxide. They settled on green tea, specifically an oenological product called Ti Premium, which they apply to the wine whenever it is exposed to oxygen during the winemaking process.

While there's no suggestion that the wine itself takes on any flavour from the green tea, the flavours definitely evolve in a way that would be impossible under standard sulphuring regimes, and this is the magic of the wine. Furthermore, since the additive is a type of tannin, there is a textural element which I describe as giving creaminess on the palate, and which Julia called 'chewy' when she tasted the 2020.

Since the first vintage, the trial-and-error approach to making this wine has seen the style evolve. When I tasted the 2021 vintage, I noticed the orchard fruit again, but in a fresher and more pure style. Then last month, when I tasted the 2023 vintage in situ at the vineyard in Marlborough, it displayed some of the classic Marlborough Sauvignon flavours – pea pod, lemongrass and gooseberry – as well as the TEE's signature creamy texture and a spiciness that Erica Crawford identifies as cumin. This was also when she explained to me the story of the dandelion that adorns the Loveblock labels.

This latest release seems to have found an equilibrium between the oxidative development facilitated by the green tea and the more typical qualities of Marlborough Sauvignon, and it is my favourite vintage. With 6.7 grams per litre of residual sugar balanced by 7 grams of total acidity, it finds tightrope balance between tangy acidity and off-dry sweetness that complements the ripeness of fruit.

Whereas the 2022 vintage has only 2.4 grams of sugar, and at 12.5% abv is half a degree lower in alcohol too – evidently an honest reflection of a very different vintage.

Both vintages are available internationally, as well as some of the older releases. The US importer is Terlato Wines International, while there are two UK importers: Graft Wine Company in England and Must Wines in Scotland. It's available in eight other export markets, too – see their website's helpful list.

For me, Loveblock Tee represents a style of Sauvignon Blanc that fulfils a potential for complexity and interest that is rare among its Marlborough peers, most of which adhere to a strict commercial style. For that, as well as their commitment to sustainability, and for the story of the dandelion, it's a heavenly wine.

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To see full tasting notes and scores for four different vintages of Loveblock, Tee Sauvignon Blanc, click here.

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New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc

Richard Hemming MW