2025 Earthsong Sauvignon Blanc Dillon's Point New Zealand 750 ml

Masters of Wine Fergal Tynan and Giles Cooke built South Australia’s Thistledown into a superstar winery in just over a decade. Their secret? They look for the oldest vines in the greatest terroirs, then get the hell out of the way.

For their New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, the pair made a beeline for Dillons Point in Marlborough—just three miles from the crisp nighttime air of Cloudy Bay. They knew that the dirt here was magic: fertile alluvial soils that drive sky-high thiol levels in old-vine Sauvignon Blanc, making for staggering tropical-fruit flavors.

Earthsong’s regeneratively farmed single-vineyard site is in fact closer to Te Koko-o-Kupe (Cloudy Bay) than Cloudy Bay Vineyards itself. Great drainage and bracingly cold nights make Dillons Point optimal for Sauvignon Blanc, which is why it’s home to some of the oldest vineyards in Marlborough.

In 2025, the Marlborough growing season rewarded patience. An exceptionally mild spring brought flowering two weeks ahead of schedule, setting up a healthy, even fruit set across the region. Then January and February turned cool, putting the brakes on sugar accumulation and stretching the ripening window well into autumn. The result was grapes with the kind of slow-built aromatic intensity that Dillons Point is made for—tropical fruit and citrus dialed all the way up, with the bracing acidity that makes Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc impossible to put down.

Tynan and Cooke first met the night before they sat the Master of Wine exam in 1998. Both passed, and both eventually found their way to South Australia, where they founded Thistledown in 2010 with a shared belief that Australian wine didn’t have to mean big, alcoholic, and overworked. Today, Thistledown ranks among the top 20 wineries in the country according to the Halliday Wine Companion. Earthsong is what happens when that same obsessive attention to terroir crosses the Tasman.