New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs: 20 under £25

Ripe, pure, complex and developing, with a core of tropical and orchard fruits, a fine toasty leesy layer and enticing minerality. Lovely mealy, fine-textured mouthfeel, enhancing flavours of peach, apple and tropical fruits then herbs and leesy autolysis. Well made with a very lengthy finish. Delicious!

Complex, flinty, mineral, wild and earthy. Aromas and flavours of peach and preserved lemon, tropical flowers and grapefruit, hay, fresh herb and fruit spice. Distinctive texture with a fine lees, brisk acidity and a mineral mouthfeel. Expressive and complex, lengthy and delicious. A fascinating wine!

Pure, focused and complex bouquet of white-fleshed orchard fruits, ripe citrus, herbs, spicy minerals and a fine lees layer. Tense, youthful and dry on the palate with flavours of sweet citrus, green apple and pear. Persistent fresh herb, lees and stony mineral notes are carried through by the acidity. An exacting example.

A Kiwi Sauvignon of real class and quality that justifies its premium price tag. The Element Series is a limited-edition, terroir-focused range of varietal wines that showcase fruit from a specific site – here the shingle soils of the Te Awanga vineyard, cooled by the South Pacific Ocean. Half the grapes were fermented in 500L oak puncheons and the wine spent 16 months on lees, giving gentle spice and creamy complexity to the palate of tropical fruit, grassy hints and a seam of saline minerals. Crisp acidity gives elegance and structure. Seek out the current 2018 vintage too.

The fresh, crunchy, unashamedly summery flavours of Sauvignon Blanc were always going to feature prominently in this listing. This is a precise yet energetic Marlborough Sauvignon, tangy in style but with complex lime, nettle, curry leaf, gooseberry and anis notes. It's dry, linear and very long - a serious and food-friendly style ideal for summer salads or goat's cheese.

Not your average Marlborough Sauvignon' the blurb says. Tasting blind, I had this firmly in the upper Loire, given the woodsmoke, lime, gunflint, wet wool and honey aromas and dry, pithy, complex palate profile whose generous texture hinted at the use of old oak. This bottle divided opinion in our household. But it was one to keep coming back to, improving over time and pairing well with food.

Rohe, meaning territory in Mãori, showcases the distinct terroirs of each of Marlborough’s sub-regions. Blind River is the driest, coolest, windiest of those, producing intense, concentrated wines. This shows ripe pineapple, guava and yuzu citrus tones on the weighty palate, which carries the alcohol well, leading to a long mango lassi finish. A 2019 DWWA Platinum winner.

Zesty, fruity and classically inviting Sauvignon Blanc aromas. There's firm acidity on the palate contrasting with ripe tropical passion fruit, peach, grapefruit peel and fresh herbs. Balanced and well made but needing some more time to settle.

Marlborough’s oldest walnut tree sits in the middle of this estate’s certified organic Sauvignon Blanc vines. This great-value example has a weighty mouthfeel with a savoury, textured palate from wild-yeast fermentation, lifted by crisp acidity. Very pure and vibrant, bristling with grapefruit pith and tropical guava flavours.

Croatian-born Josip Babich made his first Kiwi wine in 1916 and the third-generation today is still going strong. From the 60ha certified organic Headwaters Vineyard this has great purity and vibrancy of apple, peach, orange blossom and zesty citrus acidity with a wild-yeast tang. Great quality for the price.

New to the UK, this is a distinctive and appealing organic Sauvignon that seems more French than Kiwi, with its Loire clones and oak use. Wild yeasts, lees work and malolactic fermentation lend this a rich, creamy nutty profile, given greater complexity and spice tones from barrel fermentation and ageing to join flavours of baked apple, roasted peach and tangy lemon.

Ripe lemon, lime and grapefruit aromas give way to a grassy, fresh herb undertone. The vibrant, zesty palate boasts a creamy texture, a touch of spice and lovely minerality through the lively finish.

Refreshing, innovative wine made with green tea powder (hence the name) as an antioxidant in place of SO2. Appealing zesty tangerine and apple compote aromas, with an intense, mouthfilling grapefruit attack on the palate. Organic.

From the cool-climate of Martinborough, intense aromatics carry zesty grapefruit, tangerine and ripe peach alongside fresh earth notes. These continue on the crisp, mineral palate, where exceptionally bright lemon verbena meets fresh-cut grass, giving way to clean, harmonious finish.

Quite a grassy, citrussy style of Sauvignon Blanc, with more of the perky gooseberry and nettle side of the flavour spectrum than overt tropical fruit. There's sharp sherbet lemon acidity running throughout, turning more creamy on the finish. Perfect with a Friday fish supper.

Zesty blackcurrant, passion fruit and pink grapefruit aromas lead to quite a weighty palate of ripe pears, guava and more passion fruit. From one of New Zealand's greenest wineries, grapes for this great-value wine come from a vineyard so close to the ocean they get misted with seaspray.

The 2020 vintage was a great one for Sauvignon Blanc in New Zealand, and Hamish Clark has crafted a lipsmacking one here, from prime blocks in the Dillon's Point subregion near the ocean. Classic aromas of passionfruit, mango and kiwi continue on the tropical palate, which is lifted by a lively seam of tangy gooseberry acidity.

An aromatic take on the classic Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc in collaboration with Yealands Estate. Most of the grapes are sourced from the coller Awatere Valley sub-region, featuring crunchy green apple, lime, gooseberry and asparagus on the nose, it's crisp and saline on the palate, spiced up by a herbal grip. SW

Pleasant aromas of white peach, gooseberry and grass are joined by a hint of orange rind. The palate is bright and zesty, with lemon and lime flecks alongside good acidity, gooseberry notes and herbal tones. Pretty classic NZ Sauvignon!

Made by Foley Family Wines, this is classic Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, but with added richness and weight from the fermentation in French oak. The fruit comes from the Waihopai Valley and it's quite an exotic, tropical style with grapefruit citrus notes, as opposed to the greener, more herbaceous, pyrazine style of some Marlborough Sauvignons. Worth a try if you've only tasted unoaked Marlborough Sauvignon up to now.