Blank Canvas Meta Marlborough Late Harvest Riesling 2025 (37.5cl)
£20.25
The wine
Botrytis does the work here, concentrating healthy fruit into shrivelled, intensely sweet berries in the last weeks of autumn. The result is richly hedonistic and nectareous, with citrus zest, orange blossom honey and marmalade, and a pronounced sweetness carried by a vibrant backbone of acidity that gives the finish lift and persistence.
Meta comes from the Muritai vineyard, tended by Simon and Vanessa Barker on heavy clay less than two kilometres from Marlborough’s wild east coast, in one of its windiest pockets: the constant sea breeze keeps disease at bay and cool winds off ocean and mountain slow ripening through the autumn evenings. Blank Canvas is the project of consultant winemaker Matt Thomson and Sophie Parker-Thomson MW. The fruit was selectively hand picked, whole-bunch pressed, then returned to its skins overnight before a second pressing; fermentation stopped naturally at 8.5 per cent, leaving 178 grams of sugar against 9.4 of acidity, and the wine spent seven months on light lees. This is the half bottle.
The producer
Blank Canvas
View all Blank Canvas winesBlank Canvas is the work of Master of Wine Sophie Parker-Thomson and the acclaimed winemaker Matt Thomson, a husband-and-wife partnership founded in 2012. Their philosophy is art meets science: seek out exceptional single vineyards across New Zealand, then match variety and style precisely to place.
The focus is Marlborough, where Sophie chairs Appellation Marlborough Wine, yet the range roams from racy Blind River Riesling and textural barrel-fermented Sauvignon to perfumed single-vineyard Pinot Noir and a cool-climate Gimblett Gravels Syrah. In 2025 the couple secured their long-awaited home, an amphitheatre vineyard high in the Omaka Valley.
These are small-batch, hand-crafted wines of real precision and personality, from two of the most respected names in New Zealand fine wine.
