Cloudy Bay's David Hohnen links up with Off Piste Wines to produce Bordeaux wine

By Richard Siddle

Published: 19 May, 2014

Cloudy Bay founder and Australian winemaker, David Hohnen, has linked up with UK distributor, Off Piste Wines, to make their own exclusive wines in France.

Their first wine, a 2013 Bordeaux Sauvignon Blanc, has already been picked up by Tesco.com and is on sale for £12 a bottle. Called L'Envers it is a nod to Hohnen's southern hemisphere roots as it means "upside down" in French.

Hohnen produced the wine alongside Off Piste's winemaker Clem Yates MW at Caves de Sauveterre in Bordeaux's Entre Deux Mers region. Its first year production is 20,000 cases of six.

Ant Fairbank, Off Piste's managing director, said of the link up with Hohnen: "David has a long track record of thinking outside the box and trying new initiatives with enormous success. That is very much the Off Piste philosophy and we are delighted to be able to team up with him. We share a very similar approach to the wine market and look forward to developing our collaboration in future".

David Hohnen

David Hohnen added: "In years gone by I had some bad experiences with inexpensive Bordeaux whites and felt there was a real opportunity to apply my experiences on the other side of the world to making something innovative here. Caves de Sauveterre's wide grower base and state of the art facilities gave us the base to work with and I am delighted by the result."

Yates said they had decided to produce a Bordeaux Sauvignon Blanc first as it is clearly a wine style that is on trend in the UK and a variety Off Piste has already had success with in other countries. "Combining this with David's expertise was an easy decision. We chose Bordeaux after looking at a number of other premium producing regions because we felt the conditions best suited the style we wanted for our market. David and I worked closely together with the French winemaking team before, during and after the harvest to craft the wine style," explained Yates.

Visitors to next month's London Wine Fair will be able to meet Hohnen and taste the wines of Off Piste's stand N50.

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