Cloudy Bay

Few wineries have redrawn the map as decisively as Cloudy Bay. Founded in 1985 in the Wairau valley by the Australian winemaker David Hohnen, its Sauvignon Blanc introduced the world to Marlborough and set a template that a generation of producers followed.

The timing was extraordinary. Marlborough's first commercial vines had gone in only in 1973, and within a decade of Cloudy Bay's founding New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc had become one of the most recognisable wine styles on earth. The region's cool nights and long, intense daylight produce thiols, the aromatic compounds behind that passion fruit and grapefruit character, in concentrations found almost nowhere else.

The estate takes its name from the bay Captain Cook charted in 1770, so called for the silt the Wairau carries into it. Te Koko, the barrel-fermented wild-yeast Sauvignon first made in 1996, shows what the variety can do given time and ambition, and remains one of the most serious white wines in the country.