Six blends in, find out what really happens behind the scenes with Graham and his SauviGNon!
Far from just trading on the name of the leading Irish TV presenter, the Graham Norton Own SauviGNon Blanc - as with the rest of the Own range features significant involvement from the Cork man himself, as a new blending video demonstrates.
Print25 July 2019
While celebrity wines aren’t uncommon, celebrity wines where the person with their name on the bottle gets hands-on with the winemaking are almost unheard of. This year sees the release of the sixth vintage of Graham Norton’s Own SauviGNon Blanc, and it’s the fifth vintage that the star has blended himself.
Collaborators, New Zealand winery Invivo & Co again brought samples of Marlborough SauviGNon Blanc to Graham in London, for a three-hour session of sampling, blending, assessing and finally approving. Then Invivo & Co winemaker Rob Cameron took the final recipe back to New Zealand to create this year’s vintage.
The wine will then be on sale in ten countries where the Graham Norton wine brand is now available.
Expert approval
At this year’s blending session, there was a new face in the room. Wine expert Joe Fattorini, with over 30 years in the trade, joined Norton and the Invivo & Co team to cast a critical eye over proceedings – and came away impressed,
“The blending process Graham and the Invivo boys go through is exactly what you’d see at any winery in the world,” Fattorini says. “This is real winemaking, by people who care deeply about what they’re doing.”
Norton clearly knows what he’s doing. His personally-blended wines which include Rosé, Shiraz and Prosecco have won over 50 medals including four trophies from the UK’s People’s Choice Awards, Gold at the Global Sauvignon Masters and Gold at the Prosecco Masters. US publications Wine Advocate and Wine Spectator have awarded the Graham Norton Sauvignon 90 points and the wine has been chosen for Qantas Business class.
Watch the 2019 blending video with Graham here: https://vimeo.com/349352477
The 2019 SauviGNon Blanc
So, how’s the wine? Norton admits that the 2019 blending session was hard work: a standout vintage in Marlborough, New Zealand, meant it was tough to pick winners from this year’s vineyard samples.
Meanwhile, Invivo & Co winemaker Rob Cameron described the 2019 wine as “delicious! 2019 has been a great vintage and Graham has characteristically weaved his blend between parcels with herbaceous characters and others with more tropical and citrus notes.
“Overall the wine is a beautifully bold statement of Sauvignon Blanc which I’m sure will be a hit with all GN fans,” Cameron added.
Graham Norton’s Own Wines are distributed in Ireland by Barry & Fitzwilliam and are available nationwide in Ireland from SuperValu, Dunnes, Tesco, Spar and Carry Out.
For more information, visit www.invivowines.com/GN
Twitter: @invivowines Instagram: InvivoWines #GN19
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