Every year, our winemakers face one of their most intensive challenges: blending. Blending is a meticulous process used to create the distinctive Cloudy Bay house style you know and love. Here’s a peek at how they do it.

The team starts by selecting the grapes for each Sauvignon Blanc vintage. Then they do a blind tasting of about 100 individual wines (one from each vineyard parcel). From there, they assess each wine’s aromatic profile, freshness, concentration and closeness to the Cloudy Bay style.

There is no compromise when the team decide whether each wine is in, or out. It must be perfect. Sometimes that means whittling the selection down to 30% of the original production. Take a glimpse…

Once blending is done, each vintage reflects the terroir and climatic conditions of the year. After all, that’s wine: the juicy annual biography of its terroir.

And finally, when the hours of craft and collaboration are complete, the team celebrates with well-earned and locally loved Burleigh Pies, of course!