The best Sauvignon blancs of 2025  

Round & About

Round & About magazine’s wine columnist, Giles Luckett, picks his Sauvignon Blanc selections for summer 2025 

Summer’s here!  Well, meteorologically speaking, and that’s the only language I speak, which admittedly has drawbacks in everyday life.  Anyway, it’s here, and here are some sensational summer Sauvignons for you to try this summer. 

I’ll start with a classic Bordeaux Sauvignon, the Tutiac (Sainsbury’s £10.50/£8.50 with Nectar).  White Bordeaux has always been excellent value, and this modern style (cool fermentation, no oak) offers masses of mouthwatering gooseberry and citrus fruit with dry minerals and savoury green peppers to the finish.  Enjoy this chilled with barbecued poultry and green salads. 

The Loire Valley is home to some of the finest Sauvignons on Earth, and few producers can match Joseph Mellot.  Their Sancerre (Tesco £24.50) is about as good as Sancerre gets, but for me it’s their Pouilly-Fumé that steals the show.  Whereas Sancerre is about vibrancy, Pouilly-Fumé shows Sauvignon in a richer, smoky style. The Pouilly-Fumé Le Chant des Vignes (Noble Green £21.90/£19.90 on a mixed six) is a powerful, sumptuous wine, the zesty fruit and minerality being joined by peaches, apricots, and apples which are wrapped in a flint-smoke coating and seasoned with honey.  Impressive now, you can see this developing over the coming years. 

You can’t talk about Sauvignon and not mention New Zealand.  The Kiwis redefined Sauvignon in the ‘80s, producing explosively fruit-driven wines that were unlike anything we’d seen.  Innovation continues to this day, as can be seen in the Ned (Sainsbury’s £10.75) and the Jackson Estate Grey Ghost (Amazon £22).  The Ned is a wonderfully fragrant wine, full of lemon and lime, rhubarb and capsicums.  On the palate, it retains this energy, but it’s not aggressive or overwhelming; rather, it offers peach and pear roundness, with green herb and nettle tangs. 

The Jackson Estate Grey Ghost puts a Bordeaux spin on things.  Fermented using wild yeast and aged in small French oak casks, it has an elegant mouthfeel and a soft, smoky tone that’s larded with vanilla.   The generous quantities of green and yellow fruits are presented harmoniously, with layers of flavour building with every sip.  Toward the finish, a savoury seam of toast and minerals cleanses the palate, so while it is oaky, it doesn’t feel heavy or clumsy.  This was delightful with roasted asparagus and chevre, but it would be lovely with smoked fish. 

And speaking of innovation, how about the Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc… in a can (Tesco £3.50).  Canned wines have become increasingly popular for environmental and convenience reasons.  I’ve had some good ones, and I’ve had some that tasted like an exterminator had sulphured them.  This, though, was excellent.  We tried it blind against a bottle and couldn’t tell the difference.  No metallic tint, no eggy overtones, nothing but bright green fruit and zingy gooseberry freshness, it’s just the thing for picnics. 

Spain is widely regarded as one of the world’s great wine nations, offering a dazzling array of exceptional wines, many of which offer great value for money.  Unlike in many countries, Sauvignon Blanc is a relatively minor player in Spain, with most producers favouring local varieties such as Albariño, Verdejo, or Macabeo.  In the right hands, however, Spanish Sauvignon can be great.  Take the Torres Viña Sol (Tesco £7.75/£6.75 with a Clubcard).  Lively and bright, this is a lighter take on Sauvignon, with gentle, grassy notes of apples, lemons, and rhubarb accompanied by a gentle nettle and elderflower.  Serve this chilled with yellow cheeses or lightly smoked fish or poultry. 

Our Sauvignon Blanc world tour now takes us to South Africa.  Being blessed with a seemingly unlimited range of sites and microclimates, South Africa can make something special from pretty much every grape on Earth. Their Sauvignons encompass everything from light, easy-to-like quaffers to serious, intense wines that can age well. Two of my favourites are the Hermanuspietersfontein Kaalvoet Meisie Sauvignon Blanc 2024 (Perfect Cellar £17.45) and Journey’s End Ad Infinitum (Noble Green, £28). 

The Hermanuspietersfontein Kaalvoet Meisie is quite a mouthful, and not just in name, and is produced from grapes grown in Walker Bay and has an immediately attractive nose of grapefruit, lemon, green peppers and spearmint, backed by touches of softer, tropical fruits.  These notes are picked up in the mouth, where you get a combination of zest and weight. Crisp, fresh, and well delineated, it delivers flavours of lemon and lime, white peach and rhubarb, passionfruit and gooseberry, before minerals, lemon zest, capsicums, and guava come in at the end.  This would be ideal with a green salad, barbecued white fish and poultry, or with salty hors d’oeuvres.  

The Ad Infinitum is a serious wine that takes its lead from the great white wines of Bordeaux.  Ghostly pale with a shimmering, green-gold hue. The nose is fresh, zesty, has piercing notes of gooseberries and rhubarb with a smoky tone and savour, mineral edge. The fruit-savoury tension continues to the palate, where mouth-watering citrus, red pears, and white peach are balanced by a steely minerality, a curt touch of peel and a hint of creamy honey. Youthful and intense, in another year or two, this will put on weight and richness and become even more compelling. 

I’ll finish with a flourish (of high-denomination bank notes/a Black Amex) with the world’s most expensive Sauvignon, the Screaming Eagle Sauvignon Blanc (Cru £2,685).  Yes, it’s an enormous sum for a bottle of wine, but production is minuscule, being American buyers are plentiful, and even from the pipette-sized sample I was given, it’s clearly hugely impressive.  Everything about this wine is oversized.  The bouquet is a super-charged mix of citrus, white and green berries, herbs, crushed rocks, white blossoms and smoke.  Mouth-filling and opulent, I could fill a page with the essences and aromas that abound when tasting this fabled wine. It’s amazing that something this big can remain balanced and refined.  Is it worth the money?  Well, if you’re one of Screaming Eagle’s billionaire customers, I’m sure it is, but personally, I’d sooner have 8 cases of Infinitum.