Lawson's Dry Hills Reserve Sauvignon Blanc 2025

Reviews and Accolades

Cameron Douglas MS: 95/100 & Top NZ Wine Selection 2025.  An excellent bouquet with focus and concentration, spice and core of fruit purity. Aromas and flavours of ripe, sweet grapefruit, spice and cape gooseberry along with a core of complexity with layers of floral tones and mineral. A satin touch on the palate swings to power with the acid line and core fruit flavours remain persistent and pure. Delicious, fresh, balanced and well made with best drinking from 2025 through 2028+.

New Zealand International Wine Show 2025: 96/100 & Gold. A powerful rendition, the enticing bouquet shows grapefruit, green rock melon, lime peel, and jasmine aromas with a hint of oatmeal. The concentrated palate offers outstanding weight and persistence, beautifully structured by pitch-perfect acidity, and finishes superbly long and engaging. At its best: now to 2032.

Marlborough Wine Show 2025: 93/100 & Silver.

James Suckling (JamesSuckling.com): 91/100. Driven, juicy and vivid, with limes, passion fruit and some fresh herbs on the nose. Medium-bodied with fresh acidity. Plenty of energy with a focused finish. Drink or hold.

Tasting Note

This wine is bursting with a complex array of aromatics including passionfruit, lime, green papaya, gooseberry, rock melon and honeysuckle. The palate is packed with intense flavours and a lovely weight and minerality. Crisp and dry on the finish.

Aromas and flavours:

Additional information

Grape variety: 100% Sauvignon Blanc

Food match: Shellfish (especially oysters!) or any seafood that is prepared with just a squeeze of lemon and hint of seasoning. Also lovely with salads and vegetarian dishes and aromatic Asian style foods.

Vineyards: This wine is 65% from the Awatere Valley vineyard and 35% from the Wairau Valley block. The vines in both blocks are well over 20yrs old.

Growing Season 2025: 2025 was marked by good flowering and a dry, warm summer which meant we could harvest each parcel of grapes when they reached ideal ripeness and flavour. Careful, considerate viticulture ensures these vineyards continue to produce world-class fruit.

Winemaking: Each parcel of grapes was picked as it reached optimum ripeness with maximum passionfruit characters and while the acidity was still bright and crisp. The grapes were gently pressed before being fermented in stainless steel tanks with selected cultured yeast. We also fermented 10% with wild yeast (naturally present on the skins of the grapes) in old French barriques to give added complexity.

Alcohol: 13.0% vol

Residual sugar: 4.0 g/l

Total acidity: 6.1 g/l

Bottle size: 0.75l

Vegan: yes

Notice: contains sulphites.

Cellaring potential: Delicious right now while bright and fruity, but the flavours will continue to integrate to give a more seamless expression until 2028.

Closure: Screwcap

Ingredients: Grapes, preservative: sulphites; antioxidant: L ascorbic acid; stabilizing agent: yeast mannoproteins. 

Produced and bottled by: Lawson's Dry Hills Wines Limited, PO Box 4020, Redwood Village, Blenheim 7242, New Zealand