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Marlborough winemaker Alistair Soper has been awarded three gold medals, for his Highfield Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2008, Chardonnay 2007 and Riesling 2008 at the New Zealand Royal Easter Show wine awards held in Auckland in March. Highfield Sauvignon Blanc also took out the Export Trophy for the third time in ten years.

The gold for the Highfield Sauvignon Blanc 2008 at this weekend’s show stretches the un-broken run of gold medals to 10 years for the same wine. Al said “We’ve earned gold medals with every vintage of the Sauvignon Blanc for the last decade, I doubt that any other winery could better that, especially as we only enter our wines into a handful of shows each year”.

It has been a full decade now since Al first took over the wine making reins at Highfield Estate in Marlborough. Since that first vintage in 1999 he’s had a remarkable run of success.

The performance at the Royal Easter Show is particularly significant for Al who said “We entered 5 wines this year, so to win three golds, is a wonderful result. For Highfield wines we only use ‘free run juice’ which is the juice which comes from the weight of the grapes and not from pressing them. This gives us the very finest quality juice to work with”

At the Awards Dinner held in Auckland on Saturday night the Trophy for the best Export Wine in Show was accepted by winemakers, Mike Mullany and Jeremy Brown. This is the third time the Sauvignon Blanc has won that particular Trophy, which each year is awarded  by the guest overseas judge who this year was Australian wine judge Mike DeGaris who said of the wine “it's great to see Highfield  recognised yet again for its excellence in the export Awards.  Three times in 10 years shows how consistent and quality driven their wines are.”

Al’s talent as a wine maker and style of winemaking is endorsed by Master of Wine Bob Campbell who considers Highfield as “clearly one of Marlborough’s first division wine producers. When you buy a Highfield wine you are literally buying the cream of the crop” commented Campbell.