It’s been a spectacular success story — one of the most dramatic and consistent ascents in modern wine history. Essentially out of nowhere, beginning around the turn of the millennium, New Zealand wine exports lit the candle and cleared the launchpad.
Over the decades since — defying even the crushing effects of the global financial crisis during the late aughts and early 2010s — global wine exports from the remote Oceania nation firmly established their own category on retail shelves and on-premise lists, finally attaining an independent brand separate from the dominant viticultural colossus to its northwest, Australia.
But there’s a catch. About 85 percent of those New Zealand exports are one lonely variety: Sauvignon Blanc. That’s a whole lot of eggs in one little basket. And concerningly, over the past two years, the value of New Zealand wine exports has seen its first substantial slide in modern history: down to 2018 levels after peaking in 2022.
It’s been decades of nothing but good news and good times for New Zealand wine exports up until now, but market monoculture has a way of exposing the soft underbelly of a business model to the slings and arrows of competition and fickle fashion. “Other than Sauvignon Blanc, New Zealand is a pretty hard sell,” admits Ronnie Sanders of New Jersey’s Vine Street Imports, a well-regarded operation representing New Zealand brands, among others. “As a country, [it] really hasn’t done a good job at expanding [its] brand.”
In short, if something happens to its rainmaking Sauvignon Blanc, New Zealand could be in real trouble.
That’s not to say the Kiwi rocket ship has been shot out of orbit just yet. Without a doubt, the overall economic picture for the global wine market is one of destocking and moderation trends popping the pandemic-era buying spree bubble. It’s entirely possible that the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc ascent could continue after a two-year correction.
But is that all that’s going on here, and could this unprecedented tumble portend a deteriorating situation for the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc brand?
The Rise of New Zealand’s Sauvignon Blanc Superhero
“We are incredibly proud of our flagship variety that has gone from zero to hero in just a few decades,” says Charlotte Read, general manager of brand for national trade organization New Zealand Winegrowers. “[It’s] arguably the quickest establishment of a benchmark wine style to ever be seen globally.”
The remarkable rise of New Zealand’s singularly assertive rendition of Sauvignon Blanc emerged from a fortuitous confluence of association, user-friendliness, and advantageous economics. It made its grand entrance via the trails blazed and models built by the Shiraz boom emanating from neighboring Australia.
In the ‘80s and ‘90s, exports from Down Under steadily grew thanks to a weakening Australian dollar, and the bold, tooth-staining Aussie style rode high on the praise of one Robert Parker. Shiraz of that era and provenance was unapologetically bold, easy for the average consumer to understand, and decidedly affordable.
“[It] coincides with a broader trend in consumer preferences toward crisp, more refreshing attributes that are versatile and pair well with a wide variety of foods.”
In 1985, David Hohnen of Australia’s Margaret River icon Cape Mentelle had already planted a flag in Marlborough, New Zealand, making a splash with the founding of Cloudy Bay Vineyards and its signature Sauvignon Blanc profile. “There’s a definite style that combines delicious flavors that are easy to understand at a price point that doesn’t break the bank,” Sanders says. “It all started with Cloudy Bay and then just kept growing.”
The grape variety, well suited to simple, easily controlled stainless-steel production sans expensive oak — and a reputation for retaining good flavor concentration at high vineyard yields — found a perfect home in the cool, sunny corner of the South Island.
At the turn of the millennium, the wine industry on the ruggedly beautiful islands was continuing to grow at a decent clip. By that point, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc had already received abundant industry praise from both media and producers. And like its Australian neighbor, the Kiwi dollar was mirroring the Aussie’s drag through a deep trench, offering an economic silver lining for the growing New Zealand wine brand to aggressively build its export footprint and international brand recognition.
The unique tropical-punch-meets-grassy-peppery style and lip-smacking freshness — combined with the variety’s natural talent for economy of scale — met the moment when the New Zealand dollar bottomed out. From the early 2000s onward, exports took off on a dazzling two-decade climb.
Kiwi Savvy B and the White Wine Wave
The twin ascents of both New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and white wine in general are plain enough to see. “[It] coincides with a broader trend in consumer preferences toward crisp, more refreshing attributes that are versatile and pair well with a wide variety of foods,” Read says.
The macro color category has had quite the run, with white variety specialists and exclusively dedicated producers basking in the generationally demarcated preference for white wines. Big boomer reds have ebbed to make way for the “it” wines of the time, and unsurprisingly — with name recognition easily in the top three (along with Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio) — ever-adept Sauvignon Blanc has surfed the wave into an era of market supremacy.
“The rest-of-world’s crowding of the Sauvignon Blanc variety was preceded by the crowding of Shiraz earlier this century. The U.S. got tired all of a sudden of Shiraz and of Australian wine around the time of the global financial crisis.”
But the ubiquitous market flood of the distinctive New Zealand style has caused some backlash, and the market divergence over the past two years between Kiwi Savvy B and white wine in general suggests that there may be a shift underway.
Certain wine programs are now pulling back from the New Zealand standout in pursuit of alternative Sauvignon Blanc sources. “I think it’s already happened, especially in the trade. Lots of sommeliers do not take the category seriously at all,” Sanders says. “We’re already seeing a growth in our Sauvignon Blanc sales from South Africa. … It’s also really good and, in many cases, less money.”
It’s a sort of burnout that feels analogous to Australian Shiraz fatigue or the ABC (Anything But Chardonnay) movement, which was truthfully more about abusive application of oak, rather than the grape itself. There’s a cautionary thread that all three of these share: Styles that are strikingly distinctive, and subsequently see massive popularity, are prone to some kind of boom/bust cycle.
A Repeat of the Shiraz Bust?
With white wine consumption continuing to eke out growth in defiance of significant overall market contraction — not to mention bandwagon competition now closing in on all angles from other white varieties and alternative Sauvignon Blanc regions — it’d be a dereliction of duty for New Zealand producers to chalk it up to “Eh, it’s just a blip in the market. It’ll be fine.”
After decades of unparalleled growth, New Zealand’s wine exports seem to have reached a plateau and have declined for two years.
— American Association of Wine Economists AAWE (@wineecon.bsky.social) February 17, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Yes, for coveted prestige brands, often that’s the right play: Stick to your guns, know who you are, and do what you do. But assuming as much when dealing in the more value- and volume-oriented slice of the market can be a death knell for big brands, and once-powerful players in the global economy now shamefully wear that tombstone epitaph of executive complacency.
“The rest-of-world’s crowding of the Sauvignon Blanc variety was preceded by the crowding of Shiraz earlier this century,” says Kym Anderson, executive director of the Wine Economics Research Centre at University of Adelaide in South Australia. “The U.S. got tired all of a sudden of Shiraz and of Australian wine around the time of the global financial crisis.”
While he sees Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc as an inherently more resilient product, Anderson still cautions that the lesson should absolutely be heeded. “It seems less likely to me that that would happen to New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc in the U.S. market. At least not as severely as it was for Australia, where some unique forces were at work,” he says. “[But] of course it could, just as happened in the U.S. for Australian Shiraz when Parker stopped praising it.”
Anderson hedges that the damage done to artisanal Sauvignon Blanc producers in New Zealand by the mass-market brands isn’t nearly as severe as the reputational beating that artisanal Aussie Shiraz took from the likes of Casella’s Yellow Tail. “The difference in quality isn’t as large between New Zealand mass-market versus New Zealand finer Sauvignon Blanc as it was between Yellow Tail and better Australian wines,” he says. “[And] the profitability of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc producers is still very high by global standards.”
“There remains a large number of emerging wine markets where New Zealand has barely scratched the surface.”
In New Jersey, with his boots-on-the-ground perspective moving containers and cases, Sanders is also hesitant to hit the panic button just yet on the product, as back-to-back small vintages amplified the decline to a degree. “Yes, our sales numbers were down in 2022 and ‘23, but that was more because of lack of supply,” he says.
Read at New Zealand Winegrowers adds that the country’s size allows for a far more nimble response than that of hulking Australia. “We give things a go, and if it doesn’t work, [we] ‘fail fast’ and bank the valuable lessons,” she says. “There also remains a large number of emerging wine markets where New Zealand has barely scratched the surface and where we are starting to see positive growth, such as in parts of Asia.”
Taken on the whole — and with global trade drama to boot — yes, it’s entirely possible that the spectacularly steep ascent of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is slowing, or perhaps even finding a longer-term plateau. And yes, maybe it’s not “cool” anymore in the industry.
But is it in for a Shiraz-level crash? Much to the disappointment of judgy wine snobs around the world, probably not. And as spring unfolds into summer, millions will still be cracking those chilled screw cap bottles and cheerfully splashing out the now stalwart legacy sipper.
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