Sauvignon Surplus

The New Zealand wine industry is primed to suffer from a surfeit of Sauvignon Blanc in the coming years, as wine production expands exponentially and prices drop. Sauvignon Blanc, which makes up 80 percent of the nation’s wine exports, became the best selling white wine in Australia last year, and has been increasingly popular with US and British drinkers. As production of the wine has quadrupled on the South island in the past six years, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc has shifted from an almost exclusively premium brand wine and is now sold in a much wider price range, even being exported in casks. New Zealand’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry predicted that the price per litre would fall 12 percent to $7.90 from $6.31 a litre.