Time in a bottle – A vertical look at Three Brooms Marlborough SB.
Recently, we hosted a vertical tasting of Three Brooms, beginning with the 2014 vintage.
Tasted side by side, each vintage reveals subtle shifts in structure and character, based on weather and winemaking style. It was one of those moments that reminded us why wine is never just about one bottle, not about 1 year, but about a place, mood, its caretakers, and all the stories in between.
It was ABOUT TIME, also one of Gillett’s favorite movies.
Vintage Tasting:
Vintage 2014: for the first time in our vertical tastings, this wine started showing some lack of luster. Nothing unpleasant, but each of the components were a bit tired – thanks for the great run 14!
Vintage 2016: you are a bit tighter than the voluptuously aging V14. Holding your beautiful garden-fresh vegetable characters while enveloping them in citrusy exotic fruit.
Vintage 2017: You are a conundrum. What once was fully integrated and elegant has become assertive from different directions. Parts of you are aging like Halie Berry and the other part like Kieth Richards. I can get behind that.
Vintage 2018: You were MIA
Vintage 2019: Still showing the original currant leaf and kiwi fruit with minerality on the nose. Your subtle powers are not diminishing but your mouthwatering orchard and exotic fruits remain in balance with that blanket of texture.
Vintage 2020: Still our renegade. Lemons, limes and yesterday’s biscuits from the kitchen counter on the nose. Juicy acidity and exotic fruit dominate the mid-pallet. Then a bit of that classic current leaf, minerality and smokiness in its subtle tropical blanket. This was a very short year, but the concentration almost makes me forget about stock mgmt. from CY21.
Newer vintages have not varied too far from their original journey. But more to come in the next round.
Our recent vertical tasting, featuring the 2016–2025 vintages, showcases the longevity and charisma of this wine.
What is Vertical wine tasting
A vertical wine tasting is comparing the same wine from the same producer but different vintages (years) to understand how factors like weather, aging, and winemaking style change its character over time, revealing a wine’s aging potential and the unique story of each year, often moving from youngest to oldest or vice versa to understand maturity and aging patterns.
It contrasts with a horizontal tasting, which compares different wines from the same year.
About Three Brooms SAUVIGNON BLANC
Our single vineyard wine is elegant and intense, creamy and full of fruit.
Lower yields, French yeast, long, very cold fermentation and our New World version of battonage produce a wine of lush flavors, true elegance, varietal definition, classic Awatere minerality and a weighty mid-palate.
Early budbreak and later harvesting with more hang time in the long fall evenings and larger diurnal temperature differences, both of which help this wine develop its complex palette on the vine.
About Barker’s Marque – Waverley Vineyard
Barkers Marque – Waverley Vineyards offers award-winning wines from Blind River, Marlborough, New Zealand. These are the kind of wines that enthusiasts are looking for from this land of discovery – clean, fresh, intense and exotic wines of the highest caliber. They come from unique terroir with a unique profile. Our four distinctive Sauvignon Blancs and single estate Riesling, represent the finest wines in the region.
Last but not least.
We invite you to experience Three Brooms Sauvignon Blanc beyond the glass. Visit our Did You Know? page, choose one of our carefully selected recipes, along with the musical playlist “The Sounds of Waverley” handpicked by our two vintners to personify the unique character of a wine & vineyard. Together, they offer another way to discover the character of the wine and the place it comes from.
Enjoy!
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