The Myth of Motu Nui Sauvignon Blanc

Boutinot’s winemaking team have been building relationships across Chile over the past two decades, sourcing fruit and wine from across the Central Valleys. They work with a number of small family growers who pay particular attention to quality and ensure that the winemaking team has the best possible fruit to work with. Freshness and purity are the preferred hallmarks of Boutinot's Chilean wines.

Each vintage Boutinot winemaker Guillaume Letang travels the vineyards of the grower partners, blending that year's truest expression's of Chile's unique terroirs.

The label celebrates Chile’s farthest flung outpost, Motu Nui, the tiny islet (or motu) just off the coast of Easter Island. Adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and rich in Polynesian mythology, Motu Nui was the essential location for Easter Island’s legendary bird-man cult Tangata manu. Representatives from each island clan would wait for the visiting sooty terns to lay their first egg on Motu Nui, then swim across the shark-infested bay bearing that egg and climb the mainland cliffs of the Orongo volcano to claim rights of power and privilege for their clan for the following year. Many of the protagonists were devoured by sharks or fell to their deaths in this visceral trial of courage. These rituals have long since passed but their history is imprinted in the island’s history and archaeology. Today the sooty tern, depicted on the label, is protected and thrives peacefully on the island’s shore.

Sauvignon Blanc,

The Sauvignon Blanc grapes are grown in three excellent sites across the Leyda and San Antonio D.O. The proximity of the vineyards to the Pacific Ocean (only 10km’s away) and its fresh coastal breezes ensures grapes ripen slowly. This allows the grapes to retain their natural citrus flavours and freshness but also to develop great aromatics.

Sauvignon Blanc grapes in Leyda are some of the first to be harvested in Chile, and winemaking is simple to preserve this crunchy, bright fruit. Cool fermentation in stainless steel is followed by a couple of months on the fine lees which adds texture and depth. The wine is bottled early to retain the primary characters, flavours and freshness of this enchanting fruit.

The wine is sourced from grapes equally shaped by the Pacific Ocean that grow in the Aconcagua region’s coastal Leyda Valley, grapes that achieve a pungency and aromatic profile redolent of New Zealand’s Marlborough region on the other side of the Pacific Rim. Bright, aromatic and crisply textural. The Myth of Motu Nui is a delightfully aromatic Sauvignon Blanc as rich as the myths that inspire the name.

Serve with simple fish cooked over coals with lemon or a goats cheese salad.