Wine Advisor
Blank Canvas, Holdaway Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc 2025
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Rebecca Gibb MW
Succulent and serene, the 2025 Sauvignon Blanc Holdaway Vineyard offers a mellow interpretation of Marlborough. Powdery textures, finesse and balance are its key characteristics. Expect elderflower, honeydew melon and an intriguing spearmint note, all of which are rather attractive. There's no fancy-pants winemaking here, just clean, pure fruit translated with minimal fiddling. The result is all the better for it.
Reviewed by: Erin Larkin
The 2025 Holdaway Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc is from the Holdaway vineyard in Dillon's Point, a growing area right on the coast, at the mouth of the main Wairau Valley. Aromatically, the wine exhibits all the pungency and concentration of the area, yet it shows restraint too, and I like that. Here, there is passion fruit, pineapple husk, white pepper, wet linen, chalk and brine. In the mouth, the wine is textural and chalky, long and restrained—it's very good indeed. A classy offering here, it's true to its place but crafted in a sophisticated manner—or perhaps farmed to achieve this. Either way, it's very good. 13% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.
About the Producer
Blank Canvas is the effort of Matt Thomson, Master of Science and Sophie Parker-Thomson, Master of Wine crafting delicious small batch fine wines from three New Zealand wine regions - Marlborough, Hawke's Bay and Central Otago. Since launched in 2013, wines have been about celebrating the focus and detail of single vineyard expressions. There are nine exceptional sustainable single vineyards with the right soil, microclimate and innate high quality, also under the care and management by by people who have a fervent desire for their vineyard to grow great wine, not just grapes. Both Matt and Sophie put all their effort into making wines that are distinctive and cerebral, approaching each wine unencumbered by a regime or badge and are not beholden to tradition. Every vineyard, variety and vintage is approached as if it is a blank canvas. As a result, every wine tells a story, speaking of the exact place and time it is from.
